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THE CHURCHES 

AND 

THE WAGE EARNERS 



THE CHURCHES 

AND 

THE WAGE EARNERS 



A STUDY OF THE CAUSE AND 
CURE OF THEIR SEPARATION 



BY 

C. BERTRAND THOMPSON 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1909 



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LiSR^^RY of CONGRESS 
Two Co Dies Received 

Ftb 27 1809 

CLASS CL. ^^■'^C, Mo, 



COPYMGHT, XpOQ, BY 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published February, 1909 




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M. K. T. 



PREFACE 

A KEENLY analytical friend of mine is fond 
^ ^ of remarking that nearly all vicious reason- 
ing is due to the attempt to answer two ques- 
tions at once. This error, at least, I have tried 
to avoid. I have devoted my attention to a 
specific, clear-cut problem — ^that of the gulf be- 
tween the masses of the laboring people and 
the churches of to-day; and I have endeavored 
to limit myself strictly to this question, in spite 
of numerous temptations to wander into neigh- 
boring fields. 

I mention this in order to forestall a certain 
class of criticisms aimed at what, to some, may 
appear to be inadequacies of treatment. I am 
well aware, for example, that there are many 
people alienated from the churches besides the 
workingmen. Professional men, both within 
and without the churches, stand in a peculiar 
relation to them which is vastly interesting and 
significant; but with this I have at present 
nothing to do. Similarly with the economics of 
the "social question" and of socialism. Their 
discussion from a scientific point of view is of 
vital importance; but it is quite outside the 



viii PREFACE 

scope of this study. I am concerned primarily 
with the relations of the churches to these prob- 
lems; not with the problems themselves. 

If it be asked why, in the chapter entitled 
"Facts,** I have made no use of the numerous 
published statistics of church membership, the 
answer must be simply that they are not trust- 
worthy. The Federal Census made several at- 
tempts, between 1850 and 1890, to enumerate 
the population of the United States by church 
connection; but the results were so extremely 
unreliable that the effort was finally abandoned. 
The "censuses'* published year by year in the 
denominational and interdenominational jour- 
nals are quite useless until we know in detail 
how they were compiled. Tests of church mem- 
bership are so loose and so variable, and there 
is such a large subjective element in ministers* 
estimates, that the margin of error is very great 
indeed. Further, the motives for evasion and 
misrepresentation in regard to church affilia- 
tion are so strong that it is questionable whether 
accurate statistics on the subject can ever be 
compiled. 

That other and perhaps more valid criticisms 
of this work may be urged I have no doubt. 
No one can be more painfully aware of its de- 
ficiencies than myself. I can only plead in 



PREFACE ix 

mitigation, first, that, so far as I know, it is the 
first venture into this particular field; and, sec- 
ond, it is written in the sincere desire to be 
helpful to the institution and the class in which 
I am most deeply interested — organized religion 
on the one hand and toiling humanity on the 
other. If it succeed in the slightest degree in 
clearing up their mutual misunderstandings, I 
shall feel amply repaid. 

My indebtedness to other writers may be 
sufficiently obvious from the footnotes and the 
Bibliography. It remains only to acknowledge 
my obligations to Professor Francis G. Peabody, 
of Harvard University, and to my wife, for 
criticism and assistance at all stages of the work. 

C. BERTRAND THOMPSON. 

Peabody, Massachusetts, 
February 2, 1909. 



CONTENTS 

PART I: THE ALIENATION OF THE WAGE 
EARNERS FROM THE CHURCHES: ITS 
EXTENT AND ITS CAUSES 

PAGE 

DEFINITIONS , ........... 3 

Chapter I: Facts 5 

Chapter II: Causes 13 

1. Ascribable to the Wage Earners . . . . 14 

2. Workingmen's Complaints against the 

Churches 24 

3. General Criticisms 41 

4. Inherent in Modem Conditions .... 46 

Chapter III: Conclusions and Queries . . 50 

PART II: THE ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCHES 
TOWARD THE WORKINGMEN, AND ITS 
RESULTS 

PREAMBLE 55 

Chapter I: Equality 57 

1. Spiritual 57 

2. Social 59 



xii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Chapter II: Charity 65 

1. The Old Way 65 

2. The Institutional Church 70 

3. The Mission 79 

4. The Settlement 82 

Chapter III: The Social Question .... 86 

1. The Teaching of Jesus 87 

2. The Churches' Present Theory 96 

3. The Churches' Present Practice .... 102 

Chapter IV: Government .114 

PART III: CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM 

THE PROBLEM 125 

Chapter I: Atheistic Socialism 128 

Chapter II: "Christian Socialism" .... 140 

Chapter III: Inherent Incompatibilities . . 145 

1. Early Christianity and Socialism .... 145 

2. Aims 148 

3. Methods 151 

4. Moral Values 155 

Chapter IV: Origin and Correction of the 
Error 161 



CONTENTS xiii 

PART IV : WHAT TO DO 

PAGE 

THE TASK 171 

Chapter I: The Nature of the Opportunity . 173 

Chapter II: Social Preaching 179 

Chapter III: Social Practice 190 

Chapter IV: Modern Methods 196 

Chapter V: The Modern Minister . . . .212 

CONCLUSION 219 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 221 



PART I 

THE ALIENATION OF THE WAGE- 
EARNERS FROM THE CHURCHES: 
ITS EXTENT AND ITS CAUSES 



DEFINITIONS 

In any discussion of the subject of the present 
relations of the workingmen to organized re- 
ligion it is of the utmost importance to distin- 
guish clearly between the Church and the 
churches. The Christian Church is an abstrac- 
tion which stands for a certain fairly definite 
set of principles; the churches are collections of 
concrete individuals who profess allegiance to 
those principles. Men may be entirely out of 
sympathy with the churches, while believing in 
the principles of the Church; the principles of 
the Church may be entirely favorable to the 
aims and efforts of the workingmen, while the 
members of the churches are entirely opposed 
to them. 

Failure to recognize this difference is respon- 
sible for a great deal of current misunderstand- 
ing. The laborer becomes an opponent of the 
Church because dissatisfied with the churches; 
church-members accuse the laborer of base in- 
gratitude and callousness, in view of all that the 
Church has done for him in the past and its 

3 



4 THE CHURCHES 

good intentions toward him in the present. This 
discussion will be concerned primarily with the 
churches. It will have to do with the Church 
only in so far as its principles may be considered 
as binding upon and reflected by individual 
churches and church-members. 

By "wage earner," "workingman," "labor- 
er," etc., is meant, wherever used in this work, 
the person who is employed by another, for 
wages, to work with his hands. The term 
thus excludes "brain-workers," "soft-handed" 
workers, and all salaried, professional, and "in- 
dependent" business men. 



CHAPTER I 

FACTS 

^T^HE fact of the alienation of the masses from 
^ the churches has been so frequently noted 
of late years that it has become a commonplace. 
It is not, to be sufe, altogether a recent phe- 
nomenon. As far back as 1813, Rev. Rector 
Campbell said : " I know it is the boast of the 
Church of England to be the poor man's church, 
but I am afraid it is only our boast." The sep- 
aration of the "poor man" from the churches 
was then apparently viewed without any great 
concern; but now it is the cause of considerable 
alarm. To-day it is frequently referred to as the 
churches* crisis, and it is observed, with anxiety 
and deep foreboding, that the alienation is in- 
creasing. The decline is felt in all denomina- 
tions. Small congregations and empty churches 
are noted everywhere. This is the case not only 
throughout England and America, but on the 
Continent also. In France "it would be diffi- 
cult to find an assembly of Republicans in which 
the great majority are not atheists." ^ Ger- 

* Mority Kaufmann, "Christian Socialism," 146. 
5 



6 THE CHURCHES AND 

many, which sets the tone for most of the north- 
ern nations, is the home of materialism. The 
southern nations are deeply infected with the 
infidelity of France. Russia, encased in eccle- 
siastical form, is also seething with disbelief. 
This "eclipse of faith," as Kaufmann calls it, is 
"peculiar to the masses of the workingmen of 
Europe"; and he might have added, of the 
whole civilized world. 

Statistically, the rough statement that "the 
people are leaving the denominations by the mil- 
lions"^ is at least partially confirmed by the in- 
vestigations reported by Dr. Josiah Strong.^ After 
an exhaustive study of a number of selected 
representative fields in different parts of the 
United States, Strong concludes that less than 
30 per cent, of the population of America are 
regular attendants, perhaps 20 per cent, are 
irregular attendants, while fully one-half never 
attend any church at all, Protestant or Cath- 
olic. This percentage for attendance seems to 
be too high. Investigations made by the writer 
in New England towns, and by a friend in a large 
part of Boston, would not warrant an estimate 
of even 15 per cent, of the population as regular 
attendants. In the United States popular in- 

* Algernon S. Crapsey, "Religion and Politics," 315. 

2 Strong, "New Era," 203 jf. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 7 

terest in church-going seems to be greater in the 
West than in the East; but Strong's figures are 
unduly Hberal estimates for any part of the 
country. 

Statistics also show that church membership 
is steadily declining in proportion to popula- 
tion. Dr. Strong says : ^ "If the gain of the 
Church on the population during the first half 
of the [nineteenth] century is represented by 80, 
during the last half it is represented by 20, 
during the last twenty years it is represented 
by 4, and during the last ten years it is repre- 
sented by I." 

The attitude of the non-attendants is of all 
grades of opposition, from mere indifference to 
positive antipathy. Sometimes it is described 
as "indifference to theology" (this is found 
within the churches also); more often it takes 
the more serious form of indifference or even 
hostility to religion itself. Occasionally there 
appears a personal distrust of the church or the 
minister, and even a decided " antipathy to par- 
sons." ^ As we shall soon have abundant occa- 
sion to see, the attitude of the majority of class- 
conscious workingmen is, on the whole, an atti- 

* Cited in Literary Digest, June 13, 1908; cf. Joseph H. 
Crooker, "The Church of To-day," 56. 
*Paul Gohre, "Three Months in a Workshop," 175. 



8 THE CHURCHES AND 

tude of active hostility to anything and every- 
thing connected with the churches. 

It is a noteworthy fact that the people who 
are left in the churches are either the well-to-do 
and wealthy, "the hereditary rich, sheltered 
classes," or the young people from the shops 
and the offices, the "soft-handed" workers. 
The Protestant churches, as a rule, are not made 
up of the common people, but rather of the em- 
ployers. ^ There is an apparent exception to 
this rule in the Negro churches in America, 
which are made up mainly of workingmen.^ 
This is to be explained, probably, on the same 
ground as the other apparent exception, that of 
the Catholic churches in Ireland: the fact that 
the people as a whole are struggling together 
for justice and freedom. In both cases the an- 
tagonism of their environment drives them to- 
gether to the consolations and hopes of religion, 
and in both cases, also, the usually superior edu- 
cation of their clergy leads all classes to look 
naturally to them for leadership. 

* It is just this shifting of the churches "from the plain people 
to the rich" which "must be looked upon with discomfort and 
alarm," according to President Roosevelt. There is a danger of 
religion itself becoming a class matter, thus aggravating the al- 
ready increasing tendency toward "class" alignment. 

2R. R. Wright, "Social Work and Influence of the Negro 
Church, 30; Annals of the American Academy of Political and 
Social Science," 516. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 9 

The non-church-going class consists mainly 
of farmers, factory-workers, and, in America, 
immigrants. Strong's investigations in New 
England, Pennsylvania, and Ohio show a very 
small percentage of attendance from farmers. 
As for the factory-workers, it has been said by 
a churchman * who spent part of his life among 
them, that so far as they are concerned the 
church has been an utter failure. The attitude 
of some of them toward the churches he de- 
scribes as "indecent." The extent of the hos- 
tility of some of them is illustrated by the state- 
ment of a labor leader:^ "The American 
workingman hates the very shadow that the 
spire of the village church casts across his path- 
way." In England, Charles Booth, perhaps the 
most competent observer we could cite, says 
that the attitude of the workshop is " contempt- 
uous." 

In a study of the relations of immigrants to 
the churches considerable allowance must be 
made for the strong Protestant prejudices of the 
investigators. Josiah Strong says ^ that "a 
majority of immigrants believe either in a per- 
verted or superstitious form of Christianity or 

* Gohre, /. c. 187. 

2 Cited by H. F. Perry, "The Workingman's Alienation from 
the Church," 4 American Journal of Sociology y 626. 
^L. c. 191. 



10 THE CHURCHES AND 

in none at all." The figures of Grose * show 
that 52 per cent, of the immigrants are, when 
they land, nominally Christian. But residence 
in America soon begins to tell on their nominal 
allegiance, and there is everywhere a falling off. 
The Catholics are losing the Italians, the 
French, the Germans, the Hungarians, the Bo- 
hemians, and the Poles. There are over 300 
Bohemian freethinking societies in the country. 
The Irish and the recent flood of immigrants 
from south-eastern Europe — Slovaks, Sloven- 
ians, Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Bulgarians, 
Servians, Montenegrins, Ruthenians, and some 
of the Lithuanians — remain devout Catholics. 
Time, and the efforts of Protestant "mission- 
aries," will probably destroy the allegiance of 
these peoples, with the possible exception of the 
Irish. 

This tendency toward defection is not by any 
means limited to the Christian immigrants. In 
America and in England the Jews are leaving 
their ancestral synagogues in great and increas- 
ing numbers. 

Women have always preponderated in church 
congregations, and they are now relied upon as 
the main support of the average church; but 

^ N. B. Grose, "Aliens or Americans?"; the most elaborate 
investigation of this subject I have seen. 



THE WAGE EARNERS ii 

there is a falling off even in their attendance 
now becoming noticeable. "Women are begin- 
ning to stay away as they take their place in 
economic life," says Campbell.^ The churches* 
disregard of their economic and social needs is 
driving many of them, especially in cities, into 
other movements. Unions and lodges have 
reached the women with their appeal; and to it 
the women are responding, to the manifest dis- 
advantage of the churches. 

This movement away from the churches is 
more accentuated in cities than in their suburbs, 
as might be expected from the usual difference 
in the nature of their populations, as well as for 
other reasons. In the cities, the centres of man- 
ufacture and of commerce, "the overwhelming 
proportion of workingmen is out of touch with 
the churches." ^ Their indifference and hos- 
tility in London, New York, and Chicago, is 
particularly noticeable. In London only 6 per 
cent, of the people attend church, while in the 
suburbs the percentage is 29. In other large 
cities and their environs the percentages are 
similar. 

One who is actively engaged in evangelistic 

* Campbell, "Christianity and the Social Order," 2; of. Math- 
ews, "The Church and the Changing Order," 201. 

2 J. W. Cochran, "The Church and the Working Man," 30 
Ann. Am. Ac, 451. 



12 THE CHURCHES 

work may sometimes be led to think that popu- 
lar attendance is increasing rather than decreas- 
ing, because he finds his own congregations 
full. A famous preacher will observe that he 
meets large congregations wherever he goes. 
But he is apt to overlook the fact that the large 
congregation his reputation has drawn means 
smaller congregations somewhere else; that he 
is only taking members out of other churches, 
and is leaving the mass of the people untouched. 
J When a briUiant preacher settles in a parish and 
"builds it up," he has usually, in the picturesque 
language of Judson,^ "only given the ecclesias- 
tical kaleidoscope a turn, and produced a new 
arrangement of the same old bits of colored 
glass. "^ This method is worked frequently and 
in all places. It may be an advantage to the in- 
dividual who finds thereby a more congenial 
church home; but obviously it does not in the 
least alter the proportions of those "in" and 
those "out" of the churches. 

^Edward Judson, "The Church in Its Social Aspect," 30 
Ann. Am. Ac, 430. 



CHAPTER II 

CAUSES 

TX rHEN we turn to seek the causes for this 
^ * widespread movement we shall find them 
to be numerous and complex. Some of them 
seem to be rooted in the very constitution of hu- 
man nature; some are the results of recent de- 
velopments in social life. Some causes may be 
called the "fault" of the workingmen or of the 
churches; others are no one's fault, but are sim- 
ply inevitable conditions of development. Fair- 
bairn's statement * that the causes of alienation 
are involved in the whole process which has 
evolved the present social order is in a sense 
true; but the process referred to is an exceed- 
ingly complex one, and we shall find it more 
profitable to seek for more specific reasons. 

What is needed at present is a comprehensive 
and detailed study of the reasons, whether ulti- 
mately valid or not, which are currently assigned 
for the popular indifference to churches. Espe- 
cially do we need such a study from the point of 

* Fairbairn, "Religion in History and in Modern Life," 19. 
13 



14 THE CHURCHES AND 

view of one who believes that the churches alone 
are or should be the generators and conservators 
of that religious spirit without which the high- 
est civilization cannot persist; and who believes, 
therefore, that the problem now under discussion 
is the most important problem that could pos- 
sibly engage our attention. In view of the facts 
as they are, the best friend of the churches is not 
the man who, ostrich-like, compliments himself 
and his little congregation on "the flourishing 
state of religion," but is rather the man who, in 
the spirit of the physician intent upon effecting 
a cure, ascertains and describes the truth, at 
whatever risk of misunderstanding and personal 
inconvenience to himself. 

I. Ascrihahle to the Wage-Earners 

The wage- workers' indifference to the churches 
is at least partly for the same reason as that of 
any one else — indifference and resistance to the 
call of the higher life. They have no conscious- 
ness of guilt or sin, or of special need, and they 
assume that the churches are only for those who 
have. Moral flabbiness, weakness, viciousness — 
whether in the cities, where they are the results 
of overcrowding and bad influences, or in the 
country, where isolation has brought about de- 
generation and demoralization — are largely re- 



THE WAGE EARNERS 15 

sponsible for the present straits of the churches. 
The people have no longer any feeling of duty 
toward organized religion. The churches have 
no charm for them, and they use their Sundays 
for rest and recreation. This "total depravity" 
theory, however, applies to the "classes" as 
well as to the "masses"; to the professional 
and business man as well as to the laboring man; 
and it therefore does not entirely account for the 
movement under investigation, which is so dis- 
tinctively a working-class movement. 

Another reason, and one of great importance, 
is the growth of materialism among the masses. 
"Men have grown hard," said a workingman,* 
" under bitter conditions, and think of God as 
unjust and unkind, if there be any God." The 
belief in Providence has disappeared. If there 
is any purpose in the universe, it is felt to be evil 
rather than worshipful. Further, the dealings 
of the average artisan with the forces of nature 
are such as to drive from his mind any thought 
of the supernatural. "Force" and "matter" are 
all that the mechanic needs to answer all the 
questions he is wise enough to ask; he has no 
place for the hypothesis of a God. In Germany 
this tendency has been greatly fostered by the 
anti-Christian nature of the literature created 

* Perry, ^ Am. Jour. Soc, 625. 



i6 THE CHURCHES AND 

within the last forty years to satisfy the popular 
demand for an education. This literature is sat- 
urated with the materialism of the third quarter 
of the nineteenth century. It has spread through 
all nations. The workman has taken a ma- 
terialistic, negative attitude toward the soul, 
toward all things of the spirit, all ideals; conse- 
quently religion has no content for him. But 
this factor, again, is not peculiar to the working 
people; hence is not a sufficient answer to our 
particular problem. 

Another reason, and one of such vast po- 
tency as to demand special study, is the spread 
of socialism. "Among the more radical social 
reformers the attitude toward religion is hos- 
tile." ^ Says Mr. Charles Stelzle, Secretary of the 
Presbyterian Department of Labor: "Socialism 
has become for thousands of men a substitute 
for the church." The organized opposition to 
Christianity which is represented by socialism 
has been too long overlooked and neglected; but 
the detailed discussion of it must be reserved for 
another part of this book.^ 

Short of socialism, however, there is the 
whole "labor movement," including trade un- 

» Francis G. Peabody, "Jesus Christ and the Social Question," 

15- 
a See below. Part III. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 17 

ionism and all the numerous movements for the 
alleviation of the laborers' lot, which do not go 
the length of social revolution. With the ad- 
vance of economic and social science, ways and 
means for the betterment of the position of the 
working people are becoming more and more 
clear; " social work " has become practicable and 
effective, and its urgent appeal is drawing 
thousands of the best natures into its service. 
As will appear later, the churches have allowed 
this work to develop independently of them, and 
now absorption in it is working deleteriously to 
the churches' interests. The churches also are 
or may be centres of social service and agents of 
social reform; but differences in aim and in 
method have engendered a certain distrust and 
hostility between them and the later "secular" 
forms of service. Thus, the insistence of the 
churches on the upholding of law and order is 
distasteful to the more ardent reformers. And 
for those whose chief aim is the destruction of the 
existing order of things, which is certainly the 
aim of the most radical, a negative religion, or 
the negation of religion, has, as might be ex- 
pected, superior attractions. 

Connected in a way with some of these re- 
form movements are numerous misunderstand- 
ings of the object and meaning of religion which 



i8 THE CHURCHES AND 

are partly responsible for the hostile attitude of 
the people. Christianity is charged with failure 
to eliminate poverty — religion, it is said, may 
have been of some use once, but is of none now.* 
The church is looked upon as the bulwark and 
tool of capitalism, and may be referred to thus: 
"The church and the brothel, police powers and 
peace powers; in fact, all those things which we 
look upon as necessary for capitalistic stability.'* ^ 
The workingmen's contact with their employers 
in competitive and selfish dickerings gives them 
the impression that the church stands for the 
principles they there see exemplified. Further, 
they are inclined to identify religion with " belief 
in the Bible," and when they have outgrown the 
antiquated view of the Bible which is taught in 
most Sunday-schools, parochial schools, and in 
many common schools (as, for example, in Ger- 
many), they discard religion at the same time 
that they are forced to give up their old view of 
scriptural authority. Then follows a period, 
common to all half-educated people, when "le- 
gal proof" of religion is demanded. The falla- 
cies involved in all these misunderstandings can 
be easily pointed out; but the fact in which we 



* Gohre, /. c. 164, 173. 

^ Chicago Convention Industrial Workmen of the World (a la- 
bor organization of Socialistic tendencies), 1905. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 19 

are now interested is that the workmen do have 
them, and that they are contributory to their in- 
difference and hostility to the churches. 

Somewhat analogous to these is the peculiar 
misinterpretation of religious observances for 
which Veblen is responsible.* Ritual, he says, 
is an exhibition of "vicarious leisure," attesting 
the greatness of a lord in whose service time and 
effort may be recklessly wasted. "Conspicuous 
waste" is shown in gorgeous vestments, churches, 
and other "devout consumption." "The con- 
sumption of ceremonial paraphernalia required 
by any cult, in the way of shrines, temples, 
churches, vestments, sacrifices, sacraments, holi- 
day attire, etc., serves no immediate material 
end. It may be broadly characterized as items 
of conspicuous waste." Exceptional devoutness 
— i.e., any at all — is "in all cases an atavistic 
trait," allying one with criminals and "sports" 
and the classes of low intelligence and supersti- 
tion. "So far as concerns the industrial effi- 
ciency of the modern community, the character- 
istic traits of the devout temperament are a 
hindrance rather than a help." These are not, 
however, explanations of the obsolescence of re- 
ligion in industrial communities, for the masses 
of the people have never been capable of the 

» Thorstein Veblen, "The Theory of the Leisure Class." 



20 THE CHURCHES AND 

degree of sophistication evidenced by these 
ideas. 

Another misunderstanding on the part of 
many of the working people — that rehgion is 
nothing but a lucrative profession ^ — ^has had 
a shadow of foundation in the undue emphasis 
which has frequently been laid upon the financial 
needs and successes of the church. Methods of 
public and private appeal have often savored of 
commercialism in a high degree. The popular 
jest about sending for the pastor instead of the 
doctor when the small boy had swallowed the 
penny, on the ground that "the pastor could get 
money out anybody," has an element of bitter- 
ness in it. The crowds which follow "Billy" 
Sunday do so largely as a tribute to his wonder- 
ful money-making capacity; and the popular 
admiration for enormous "Missionary Funds," 
etc., is well known. But the fact is overlooked 
that every triumph of this sort brings to religion 
an ever increasing portion of popular disrespect. 

One of the chief causes of unfriendliness work- 
ing in the case of the immigrants is the fact that 
emigration is frequently due to religious perse- 
cution or oppression at home. They do not 



* "The English Established Church will more readily pardon 
an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 1-39 of its income." 
Karl Marx, " Capital," preface to First Edition. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 21 

move, as did some of the early emigrants to 
America, in order to establish their own wor- 
ship where they would be unmolested, but rather 
to escape altogether from a religion which they 
identify with State churches. Freedom in Amer- 
ica includes freedom from the domination of 
church and priesthood, and this is as eagerly 
sought as is political freedom. When America 
is reached, the first reaction is into atheism, 
complete alienation not only from the churches 
but from religion itself; later generations may 
begin to swing back, as is sometimes observed, 
but they rarely reenter the churches. The vast 
importance of this fact will be appreciated when 
it is remembered that nearly one-half of the pop- 
ulation of the United States is foreign by birth 
or parentage, and over three-quarters of the 
population in the large cities.^ The conse- 
quences of this are far-reaching. This permea- 
tion of American life by an anti-church influ- 
ence has destroyed the power of old American 
and English habits. By the introduction of 
Continental ideas of the Sabbath it has helped 
to reduce church attendance. And especially it 
has set the example, the fashion, against church- 
going. It has started the "endless chain" of 

* Strong, Z. c, 190; William Z. Ripley, "Races in the United 
States," Atl. Mo., vol. CII, p. 745. 



22 THE CHURCHES AND 

imitation; and in this case imitation has been 
particularly easy, and therefore popular. 

For, to return from immigrants to natives, 
fashion operates in the matter of church-going 
as in everything else. Notice, for example, the 
effect on the Italian v^aiters of Soho, in London, 
of the worldliness of the society they are thrown 
in contact with, as reported by Booth. This 
"high" society does not go to church; the wait- 
ers must be fashionable. In America "society" 
does go to church, and the waiters would like to 
follow; but here another cause intervenes, viz., 
the fact that "society" makes church-going ex- 
pensive. There is no doubt that the costliness 
of "holiday attire" keeps out many working- 
men and their families. "Working clothes" 
are not, by general consent, "Sunday clothes." 
To equip oneself and a family of children in the 
latter is often a financial impossibility. And 
the further necessity of keeping up with the 
better situated members of the church in pew- 
rents, subscriptions, donations to charity, to 
bazaars, etc., also militates strongly against the 
workingman with small wages. This process of 
exclusion is cumulative; for with each decrease 
in membership the demands on those who are left 
become greater — with the final result that none 
but the well-to-do can afford the luxury of religion. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 23 

The causes of separation thus far adduced — 
depravity, indifference, self-interest, misunder- 
standing, imitation — may fairly be charged to 
the workingmen. Before leaving this part of 
the subject to consider the charges which are 
levelled against the churches with more or less 
justification, it is only fair to add another cause, 
which is somewhat in extenuation of the work- 
ingmen's faults and mistakes: the influence of 
their economic position upon the possibility of 
their responses to religious appeal. 

Living on the verge of poverty, with irregu- 
larity and uncertainty of employment, must be 
admitted to be not conducive to the best soul 
life. Grinding anxiety about the mere means of 
subsistence shuts out concern for spiritual wel- 
fare. The spirit must wait until the body is fed 
and clothed. Modern factory conditions are 
unfavorable to religious life. Long and ex- 
hausting hours of labor leave no time nor energy 
for such a nicely balanced view of the whole sit- 
uation as the preacher would like to see; and the 
lassitude of the one rest-day out of seven is not 
promotive of church-going. A tired body 
means a tired mind; and the average service 
and sermon are, to say the least, not exactly 
recreative. The inability to benefit by the 
churches* ministrations may become chronic. 



24 THE CHURCHES AND 

Women and children whose lives are na^owed 

> 

and stunted by factory and sweat-shop work are 
hardly to be blamed if they finally become un- 
able to see clearly the worth of the church and 
the value of a religious life, and the beauty of 
ideals. It is psychologically impossible that 
they should. And it is not their fault. Dr. 
^Crooker says : " It is a serious question whether 
our great captains of industry and leaders of 
society are not the worst desecrators of the Sab- 
bath that the world has ever seen, though they 
themselves may regularly occupy a richly cush- 
ioned pew!" ^ (^It is not the Sabbath only which 
is desecrated: it is the divinity of human souls. "^ 

2. Workingmens Complaints against the 
Churches 

In the following discussion of those causes of 
alienation which may be properly charged to 
the churches there is no intention to offer judg- 
ment on the sincerity of the churches' work, nor 
on its theological or theoretical correctness. It 
may be that many of the charges against the 
churches are false generalizations from too few 
particulars, though many of them are admitted 
by ecclesiastical writers; in regard to others the 
churches may admit the facts but insist that 

* Crooker, /. c, 31. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 25 

their position is nevertheless the right one. It 
would, of course, be much more to the taste of 
all churchmen, including myself, to suppress or 
repel these allegations. The immense range and 
importance of the churches' benefits to human- 
ity are incontestable, but their consideration 
belongs elsewhere. The justification for enu- 
merating the following charges against the 
churches is simply that there is at least an ele- 
ment of truth in all of them, or, at any rate, the 
belief that they are true is a large contributing 
factor to the present condition. The churches' 
answer to these will be considered later in this 
study.* 

First among these reasons must be placed the 
exclusiveness of the churches as to-day consti- 
tuted. Made up as they now are mainly of the 
well-to-do and the rich, there is in them an 
indiflFerence and even antipathy to the hand- 
worker which a most eflPective bar to his inter- 
est in them. Private ownership of pews is 
one means used, intentionally or unintentionally, 
to exclude the "undesirable." (The fear of 
"swamping" by the influx of foreigners hangs 
always over the Protestant churches in the 
Northern States and in the great cities, and any 
missionary work in their immediate neighbor- 

» See below. Part II. 



26 THE CHURCHES AND 

hood is sure to be frowned upon unless it be di- 
rected toward the founding of separate churches 
for them. As one churchman puts it, the defec- 
tion of the common people is due largely to the 
"laziness and pride of the old churches." * 

Underlying this is the insistence on social dis- 
tinctions which is so objectionable to all people 
discriminated against. This, as already sug- 
gested, is fostered by the system of pew rents, 
by which the wealthier are enabled to have the 
"chief seats in the synagogue." The poor have 
also noticed that, although there are many 
churches in which all social grades mingle, there 
is a tendency for the rich to appropriate certain 
churches to themselves and build missions for 
the "lower classes," and the poor refuse to snap 
at the bone thrown them. Says Dr. Judson: 
"The poor think the rich are appropriating all 
the best things which are supposed to help peo- 
ple heavenward, as the best preaching, music 
and architecture." ^ Even the idea of the 
Fatherhood of God is alleged to appertain to a 
"regime of status." There is also a notable 
lack of democracy in the government of churches, 
which are too often ruled by wealth instead of 
by numbers. It is not surprising that in view of 

» Charles Stelzle, "Christianity's Storm Centre," 15. 
'Judson, 30 "Ann. Am. Ac," 433. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 27 

this situation the people are seeking those places 
in which their social equality is in no danger of > 
not being recognized, such as lodges and sa- ; 
loons. The enormous growth of lodges and , 
fraternal orders, as shown statistically,^ and the ) 
immense popularity of saloons, are in striking 
and significant contrast to the decline and neg- ] 
lect of the churches. 

Closely allied to this undemocracy is the ap- 
parent "excessive subserviency" of the churches 
to political power in the older countries and to 
wealth in the newer. Where the church is 
established " it is the constant temptation of the 
king-made bishop to attune his message to the 
kingly ear." ^ In America, where the churches 
are free, there is a strong suspicion of an insidi- 
ous commercial control of the pulpit, evidenced 
by its failure to rebuke wickedness in high 
places and by its protection of the "crimi- 
naloid," ^ the social brigand who accumulates 
a fortune by the legal evasion of the law. The 
church is felt to be "a corporate support of fi- 
nancial sinners." That there has been some 
occasion for this belief cannot be denied. If the 
minister has not openly defended practices 



* Strong, /. c, 128; Crooker, /. c, 36. 

2 Crapsey, /. c, 230. 

' Edward A. Ross, "Sin and Society." 



28 THE CHURCHES AND 

which common morahty knew to be wrong, he 
has certainly been silent many times when he 
was expected to speak. The dependence of the 
churches upon the financial support of the 
wealthy has an inevitable tendency in this di- 
rection.* The exceptions to this are, however, 
so numerous that there is an element of unfair- 
ness in the allegation. In all ages of the Church's 
history, before and since Christ, there have 
never been lacking churchmen whose voices 
have been heard in scathing denunciation of the 
wealthy depredator and the oppressor of wid- 
ows and orphans. 

Connected with this is a charge, not against 
the church, but against its members, which 
carries such weight that Charles Booth is moved 
to call the objection to church membership 
based on it an evidence of positive moral qual- 
ity in the workingmen : * the inconsistencies, 



* Cf. this paragraph from the New York Evening Post: "If 
. . . wants to apply the principles of morals to politics and finance, 
to speak out boldly, no matter whose feelings are hurt, to attempt 
the difficult and unpopular task of bringing religion into contact 
with daily life and thought, he must gather an independent fol- 
lowing, which has confidence in his purposes and his ideals. So 
must any minister who wishes to be absolutely unmuzzled. This 
is one reason why strong men — as the churches themselves com- 
plain — refuse the ministry as a career ; and one reason why the 
churches lack vitality." 

^ Charles Booth, "Life and Labour in London, Part III, Re- 
ligious Influences," vol. I, pp. 85-90. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 29 

or, as it has been more strongly put, the hypoc- 
risy, of Christians. The divergence between 
profession and practice, the incompatibility of 
pious humility on Sunday with laxity of con- 
science during the week, is a potent cause of 
disaffection. "The criminaloid with his loins 
girt about with religiosity," ^ stands up on Sun- 
day in the "well dressed congregation singing:^ 

He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and 
exalted them of low degree; 

He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the 
rich he hath sent empty away," 

and the spectacle is not conducive to healing the 
breach. The churches have, in practice, toler- 
ated a double standard of morality, "private" 
and " business." " Probably nothing so degrades 
the Christian religion in the view of men of the 
world as the conformity of Christian churches 
and Christian believers to the doctrine of ethi- 
cal bimetaUism," says Dr. Peabody;^ and yet 
this is the doctrine which is quite often exem- 
plified before the workingmen. 

They cite the cases of Jim Fisk and of the 
Tweed Ring, and of others not yet in their 
graves, and insist that such conduct as theirs is 

* Ross, /. c, 63. 

^ Reginald J. Campbell, ^. c, iii. 

' Peabody, /. c, 221. 



30 THE CHURCHES AND 

carried on to-day on a far more extensive scale 
by men who attend divine service with the regu- 
larity of a devotee. Charity and unselfishness 
are preached and believed in on Sunday, and 
are then exhibited in "the cultivation of a com- 
fortable religious satisfaction" only. The world 
is divided off into compartments of sacred and 
secular, and religion, under a variety of ad- 
verse influences, is compelled to confine itself to 
the former. The ministers are urged to content 
themselves with theology, worship, devoutness, 
piety. It is unfortunately true that, as the re- 
sult of a process of selection which has been 
going on now for many years, "One's sense of 
the proprieties is readily oflTended by a too de- 
tailed and intimate a handling of industrial and 
other purely human questions at the hands of 
the clergy." ^ 

It was said at a convention of American work- 
men of socialistic affinities in Chicago, that the 
Christian Church "raises a magnificent ideal in 
the remote future, to be arrived at some time 
sooner or later, and in the meantime practises 
all possible wrong." ^ The exaggeration and 
injustice of this statement are patent; but if for 
"Christian Church" we substitute "professed 

> Veblen, /. c, 316. 

> Cochran, 30 Ann. Ant. Ac.y 453. 



I 



THE WAGE EARNERS 31 

Christians," there is enough truth in it to de- 
mand the most serious consideration. 

To many it appears that the churches have too 
often heeded the call to return to the "simple 
Gospel," which is understood as another way of 
telling them to keep their hands off of all living 
issues. This has been called the "sociological 
age of the world"; and the neglect of social 
teaching in favor of a narrow and limited the- 
ology, or even in favor of a broad and progres- 
sive one, is one of the chief errors of the churches. 
In the past they have often failed to adjust 
themselves to their changing environment, and 
now that they are old and "set" they are be- 
coming more and more unable to do so. "The 
laborers' demands are insistent and immediate; 
the church institution cannot adjust itself to 
them so quickly." It is notorious that as a rule 
the churches do not treat the most important 
issues as they arise. The "religious paralysis" 
in America has been attributed largely to "the 
failure of the church to grasp the moral signifi- 
cance of the slavery question" and to the effect 
on the public of the churches' treatment of such 
men as Thomas Morris, who was denied burial 
by the Methodist Church, and of such others as 
Whittier, Emerson, Garrison, Phillips, John 
Brown, Sumner, and Lincoln, who were all of 



32 THE CHURCHES AND 

them outside, and some of them under the ban, 
of the orthodox churches.^ 

And so to-day the churches' failure ade- 
quately to combat present striking evils is a bad 
influence. "The slum is an outstanding indict- 
ment against the seriousness and sincerity of 
the churches' message to the age." ^ "Effi- 
ciency in religious leadership," says Mr. Allen,^ 
"means that the working and living conditions 
be made fit to work in and live in." Judged by 
this test, the churches have faded, so far as the 
lower classes of the poor can see. They find that 
the churches have apparently left the betterment 
of their conditions to agnostics and atheists; 
and they conclude that the churches are more 
interested in talking about the rewards of the 
hereafter than in the removal of the evils they 
suffer in this life. The vast amount of philan- 
thropy and work for social amelioration which 
is carried on under distinctively Christian aus- 
pices is quite unknown to the people at large. 
For some reason there has been, of late years, 
an apparent aversion to connecting philan- 
thropy with the religious motive. Even in the 
case of the institutional church the distinctively 

* Crapsey, /. c, 264. 
^ Cochran, /. c, 446. 

^ W. H. Allen, "Efl&ciency in Religious Work," Ann. Am. Ac, 
Nov., 1907, 113. 



( 



THE WAGE EARNERS 33 

religious element is often subordinated; and 
where it is insisted upon the results are rather 
unfortunate, as we shall see later. So this alle- 
gation, although in the main untrue, stands un- 
corrected in the public mind. The element 
of truth in it is this: that the churches, no 
matter how deeply they may be interested 
in charity, even on a large scale, have not as 
a rule attacked the causes of poverty, and have 
in fact expressly said that such is not their 
business. 

This leads to another consideration which 
looms very large in the minds of the people of 
to-day: the attitude of the churches and their 
ministers toward the "social question," the 
problem of the right relations of labor and 
capital, and of the just distribution of this 
world's goods. This problem is obviously 
partly economic and partly ethical, and on 
both counts the position of organized religion 
is impugned. Ignorance of the question, in- 
difference to it, and active opposition to the 
ameliorative efforts of labor are all charged 
and believed. 

To the charge of ignorance of the economics 
of the question most ministers must plead 
guilty. Veblen has noticed that "what falls 
within the range of economics falls below the 



'^ 



34 THE CHURCHES AND 

proper level of solicitude of the priesthood in its 
best estate."* Most ecclesiastics, even when 
dealing directly with the subject, are content to 
admit, as does Fairbairn,^ "the author is not 
a student of economics; in this region he feels 
rather than sees." But economics is not a sub- 
ject in which the emotions may be relied upon 
exclusively; and Fairbairn's book, in its eco- 
nomic aspects, is a fair sample of what the re- 
sults might be expected to be.^ The ignorance 
of ministers about penology and prison reform, 
about the conditions of sweat-shop, mine and 
factory labor, about methods of social reform, 
and even about the liquor problem, has often 
been noted. 

Even in the realm of feeling the ministers 
have usually failed "to grasp the tragedy of the 
struggle now going on." Their training and 
associations make it almost impossible for them 
to get at the real opinions and feelings of the 
workingmen. It is alleged, with considerable 
truth, that the churches entirely misunderstand 
the nature of the struggle in which the intelligent 
workingmen and their leaders are engaged. 

> Veblen, /. c, 311. 

2 Andrew M. Fairbairn, /. c, vi; cf. Crooker, /. c, 98. 

^See especially Lect. VII. Cf. also Campbell, "Christianity 
and the Social Order," for a treatment of economic questions so 
naively crude as often to raise a smile. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 35 

Thus one recent writer * seems to think that the 
demand of the workingmen that the pulpit jus- 
tify itself "from an economic point of view" 
means that the ministers should "raise the best 
potatoes," or should "add a pie-counter to the 
sanctuary." It should not be overlooked, how- 
ever, that this deplorable condition is as much 
due to the reticence and secretiveness of the 
working people, and even the impatience of their 
leaders, when talking to their pastors, as to the 
indifference and ignorance of the clergy, who 
often do not know how to find out the facts, even 
when they are really interested. 

There is, however, no possible excuse for that 
antiquated "the-poor-ye-have-always-with-you " 
theory, according to which poverty is but one of 
the inscrutable and inexorable decrees of Provi- 
dence, with which it would be presumptuous, 
or even blasphemous, for man to interfere. Still 
less is there any justification, in this day of gen- 
eral social aspiration, for such pious cant as this 
(quoted from a denominational journal) : " It is 
a comforting thought that, if God has seen fit to 
keep a majority of His children from privileges 
which we think essential to happiness. He has 
made them capable of being happy with the 
fewer and simpler things which he has allowed 

* Crooker, /. c, 6^, 124. 



36 THE CHURCHES AND 

them." The logical application of this idea, 
reversing the whole trend of progress, would 
relegate humanity back to the earliest stages of 
savagery, or better still, to the condition of 
clams, whose wants are practically nil and who 
are, therefore, happy in their easy gratification 
(or at least silent under their disappointment). 
How much nobler are the stirring words of the 
"layman," Henry George:^ ("Though it may 
take the language of prayer, it is blasphemy that 
attributes to the inscrutable decrees of Provi- 
dence the suffering and brutishness that come of 
poverty; that turns with folded hands to the 
All-Father and lays on Him the responsibility for 
the want and crime of our great cities. We de- 
grade the Everlasting. We slander the Just One. 
A merciful man would have better ordered the 
world; a just man would crush with his foot such 
an ulcerous ant-hill! It is not the Almighty 
but we who are responsible for the vice and 
misery that fester amid our civilization. The 
Creator showers upon us His gifts — more than 
enough for all. But like swine scrambling for 
food, we tread them in the mire — tread them in 
the mire, while we tear and rend each other!' i 
The charge that the indifference of the 
churches is responsible for their failure to pro- 

» Henry George, "Progress and Poverty" (1905 ed.); 546. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 37 

tect the rights of the masses against encroach- 
ment, and for their comparative neglect of the 
doctrine of human brotherhood with all its im- 
plications, is very common, and is very difficult 
to answer. "Well, sir," said one man,^ "I sup- 
pose the church does not care anything about 
us poor people, and so we come not to care 
much for her either — ^the more's the pity!" To 
cite Christian Socialism as the answer to this is 
not sufficient, especially in view of the compar- 
ative insignificance and failure of that move- 
ment.^ On the other side stand the records. 
"I do not see," said Phillips Brooks, "how it 
will do any good to treat the workingmen as 
a separate class in this matter (religion) in which 
their needs and duties are just like other men's." 
The difficulty lies just in the fact that their 
needs and duties are not just like other men's. 
Says the Congregationalist: "There is too much 
talk about the church's relation to the labor 
problem, as though Christianity had a peculiar 
mission to those who labor without having their 
money employed in the work they are doing." 
That, however, is precisely the difference in- 
volved: the difference between the employment 
of money and the employment of life. The la- 



* Cited in Kaufmann, /. c, 146. 

* See below, p. 102. 



38 THE CHURCHES AND 

borer invests all that he has — his strength, his 
health, and his life — in his business; and when 
they give out he cannot clear his records and 
begin anew (at least not on this earth) merely 
by filing a petition in bankruptcy. As a promi- 
nent manufacturer said:^ "A man may sell 
cotton at a loss and say, 'Never mind; to-mor- 
row market conditions may change, and my 
loss may return to me as a profit.' He may sell 
coal at a loss and look confidently to the future 
to reimburse him — these things are mere ma- 
terial possessions; but when he sells his labor, 
that is quite another thing; for his labor is his 
own life. That is what manufacturers buy and 
the multitude of workingmen sell — parts of the 
lives of men." 

"The Archbishop of Canterbury said re- 
(cently that he worked seventeen hours a day 
' and had no time left to form an opinion as to 
the solution of the problem of the unemployed. 
To which Mr. Keir Hardie replied that ' a relig- 
ion which demands seventeen hours a day for or- 
ganization, and leaves no time for a single thought 
about starving and despairing men and women 
and children, has no message for this age.'"^ 

* J. T. Lincoln, "A Manufacturer's Point of View," Atlantic 
Mo., Vol. XCVIII, p. 288. 
^ Cochran, /. c, 446. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 39 

Still more damning in the eyes of the people 
is the alleged active opposition of the churches 
to all reforms. In England there is never-end- 
ing opposition to political, educational, and 
social reforms, as in the case of the Reform Bill 
of 1832, the social reforms of Lord Shaftesbury, 
and the present Education Bill. Even Mr. As- 
quith's temperance legislation is opposed by 
the 1,280 clergymen who have savings invested 
in breweries. In Germany there is still a strong 
popular antipathy to Luther on account of the 
part he played in the Peasants' War, which was 
decidedly reactionary and undemocratic. In 
America the churches have never taken the 
same active part in politics as in England and 
Germany. But in the United States it is gen- 
erally felt that "in the present democratic revo- 
lution the churches are not for the most part 
with the rising people, but are either indifferent 
or are with the dominant class. The clergy 
represent privilege." ^ President Gompers, of 
the American Federation of Labor, says that the 
clergy are opposed to the unions. Organized 
labor in general feels that there is an alliance 
between "the rich oppressor" and the church. 
"The parsons have taken sides with the rich." ^ 

* Crapsey, /. c, 283. 

* Gohre, /. c, 175, 



40 THE CHURCHES AND 

The Church and the State are said to be institu- 
tions designed for stultifying the people. Says 
a workingman:^ "The church has, as an or- 
ganized body, no sympathy for the masses. 
It is a sort of fashionable club where the rich are 
entertained and amused, and where most of the 
ministers are muzzled by their masters and dare 
not preach the gospel of the carpenter of Naza- 
reth." A man whose whole Hfe was ruled by 
religion, and who was at least not unfriendly to 
the churches, writes:- "He who by fraud and 
injustice gets him a million dollars will have 
. . . the best pew in the church and the personal 
regard of the eloquent clergyman who, in the 
name of Christ, preaches the gospel of Dives, 
and tones down into a meaningless flower of 
Eastern speech the stem metaphor of the camel 
and the needle's eye." Such opinions, freely 
expressed, are indicative of the feeling of large 
masses of people; and although their inequity 
and fallaciousness are patent to those who know 
the facts, there is again sufficient truth in them 
to call for notice. 

In view of this feeling, one can understand 
how church-going, in some centres of developed 
class consciousness, as in Germany, may come 

^ Perry, /. c, 626. 
« George, /. c, 458. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 41 

to be looked upon as disloyalty to class; and 
why the religious workingmen must be secret in 
their allegiance to the church, as though it were 
something to be ashamed of. 

3. General Criticisms 

The charges we have been considering so far 
are radical in their nature, and go to explain 
specifically the opposition and hostility of the 
working classes to the churches. We pass now 
to a class of criticisms the force of which is felt 
by many inside the churches as well as out, and 
which, taken alone, could not account for the 
alienation of the masses, but which add cumu- 
lative force to their more fundamental objec- 
tions. 

The archaism of the forms and services of 
many churches is distasteful. The services are 
said to be stale and uninteresting. The average 
man's great aversion to kneeling down has often 
been noticed. But worse than this is the obso- 
lete supernaturalism, express or implicit, in so 
much preaching. Says Mr. Crapsey:* "The 
great churches base all their teaching upon the 
miracle. They claim their religion is the one 
exception in the religious history of the world." 
But "economic causes work toward a secular- 

^ Crapsey, /. c, 287; cf. Campbell, /. c, 12. 



42 THE CHURCHES AND 

ization of men's habits of thought." * The 
modern farmer is brought up on scientific meth- 
ods, and the machine operative is a daily wit- 
ness of the reign of law. In the school, the fam- 
ily, the lodge and the trades union, archaism 
and superstition of every sort have vanished. 
Yet the churches, especially the old school, 
which still numbers the vast majority among its 
adherents, stubbornly refuse to rid themselves 
of the archaic and superstitious elements which 
they fondly call their "priceless heritage from 
the glorious past," "an essential link in the 
chain of historic continuity," etc. The ordinary 
"dignified" and "reverent" church service, 
with its outworn implications and its unintelli- 
gible symbolism, is not only insufferably dull to 
the average workingman, but is further posi- 
tively repugnant to the daily habits of his mind, 
steeped as the latter is in modernity, rationahty, 
and directness. The same considerations apply, 
with redoubled force, to a well-known variety 
of preaching, which insists on miracles, special 
creation, "plenary inspiration," incomprehen- 
sible and unethical schemes of salvation, etc. — 
the delight of the revivalist, but uninteresting 
to those who do not care to think about them, 
and repugnant to those who do. Men cannot 

^ Veblen, /. c, 321. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 43 

live in an atmosphere of evolution and personal 
responsibility six days out of the week, and 
then on the seventh flourish in a miasma of 
special creation and vicarious atonement of the 
Pauline variety. Among intelligent working 
people the orthodox church-goer is looked upon 
by his friends outside as either weak-minded or 
hypocritical. 

There is about some churches a certain 
aroma of weakness and failure which is strongly 
distasteful to the mind of the virile workman, 
the successful artisan or farmer. There is fre- 
quently heard in them an appeal to the "femi- 
nine" rather than the "masculine" conscience; ^ 
a concentration on the mote when the beam 
needs attention. The churches do not often 
provide a kind of work in which men can en- 
gage. Their decline is obvious to every one; 
and this decline is cumulative, for their failure 
breeds a suspicion that they are not needed. 
The growth and apparently triumphant prog- 
ress of materialism, at the same time with the 
decay of the Protestant churches, carries its 
clear lesson to the masses. They are also 
struck with the difference between the churches 
falling into disrepair and the gaudy theatres and 
massive business buildings going up all about 

^ Ross, /. c, 96. 



44 THE CHURCHES AND 

them. And when it is pointed out to them that 
worldly success and prosperity are not the 
churches' "sphere," that they are interested 
primarily in the saving of souls, the masses 
point to the increasing disaffection, to the fail- 
ure of the churches as evangelizing agencies — 
it is notorious that church agencies do not keep 
pace with the growth of population; and still 
more searchingly to their failure to make good 
people of their own members. The quarrels 
and mutual recriminations of the denomina- 
tions, and the rivalry, competition, and other 
evils of division do not help the case with the 
people. They find failure even in the efforts of 
the churches to alleviate the distresses of the 
poor. The attempted combination of ecclesias- 
tical religion with scientific relief detracts from 
the success of the churches in both fields; when 
relief is resorted to as a form of bribery the 
case is worse; and when competition between 
churches in the same mission field is begun, and 
the " atrocious system of dole against dole, treat 
against treat" ^ is installed, the ruin of the 
churches in the eyes of self-respecting people is 
complete. 

And last but not by any means least in this 
line of criticism comes the matter of the person- 

* Booth, /. c, ii, 95 and passim. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 45 

ality and ability of ministers. There has been 
no lack of personal sympathy and desire to do 
good, "consecration," among them; and that 
has been pretty generally recognized. But 
"consecration" is not enough, as experience has 
frequently and conclusively shown. For good 
or ill, the prosperity of the churches depends 
largely upoff the personality of their minis- 
ters. What do we find ? Says Kaufmann : ^ 
"Through general observation, especially among 
the country clergy, we should be inclined to say, 
admitting many exceptions, that the manner 
and method in dealing with the working classes 
on the part of the clergymen is very often either 
that of overbearing dictatorial pomposity, or 
that of softly-soothing mildness and good- 
natured imbecility." This estimate of the Eng- 
lish clergy may be adapted to America by sub- 
stituting for "dictatorial pomposity" (which 
American conditions do not favor), simple "in- 
difference." In the cities also there is abundant 
inefficiency. Low-priced men are put into the 
down-town districts to solve the hardest prob- 
lems — ^with failure as the usual result. Country 
ministers are put into city churches, with simi- 
lar outcome. The dulness of the average ser- 
mon may be partly accounted for by the lack of 

* Kaufmann, /. c, 224. 



46 THE CHURCHES AND 

inspiration in empty benches; but the empty 
benches may also sometimes be explained by 
the lack of inspiration in the sermon.^ 

4. Inherent in Modern Conditions 

It was suggested that there are some reasons 
for the decline of the churches inherent in mod- 
ern conditions, which cannot properly be 
charged, as remediable "faults," to either the 
churches or the people. To these we now turn. 

The first of these, and one of considerable 
importance, is the great mobility of the people 
of to-day. With the improvement of the ma- 
terial condition comes the desire for a better 
neighborhood to live in; and with the move- 
ment from one neighborhood to another there 
goes a change in the personnel and status of the 
churches, the "better classes" leaving the 
churches to — ^the non-church-goers. This move- 
ment has made enormous differences to the 
Protestant churches of London and New York. 
"Within recent years," says Mr. Stelzle,^ 
"forty Protestant churches moved out of the 
district below Twentieth Street in New York 
City while 300,000 people moved in." In East 

* For a sympathetic but unconsciously amusing discussion of 
sermons, see paper on that subject by A. C. Benson, in National 
Rev., Vol. XL VIII, p. 492. 

''Stelzle, /. c, 17. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 47 

London the increase of the Jewish population 
has superseded the churches with synagogues. 
The enormous growth of the cities which has 
characterized the nineteenth century has far 
outstripped the supply of churches. And within 
the cities those sections which need the most 
churches usually have the fewest. "We plant 
our churches as a rule not where the largest 
number of people live, but where the church 
will receive the largest financial support." 

In the meantime this removal of the most en- 
ergetic elements from the country to the cities 
has correspondingly weakened the country 
churches. The country and the small towns are 
drained of their best native blood, and the 
places of those who are gone are being taken (if 
at all) by foreigners, who are neither wanted in 
the old churches nor would be likely to enter 
them if they were. 

In addition to the movement of masses must 
be considered the habit of movement which in- 
dividuals have acquired to such a large extent 
from the growing custom of boarding. Board- 
ers and renters rarely stay in one place long 
enough to form permanent church attach- 
ments, and soon lose any they may have started 
with. 

Also in this connection must be noticed the 



48 THE CHURCHES AND 

effect of improved transportation facilities, which 
make it easier for the farmer and truck-gardener 
and dairyman to Hve far out in the country, 
where there are no churches, and where the dif- 
ficulties of getting into town on Sundays are 
usually considered insurmountable. Going fish- 
ing or berrying is different, for one doesn't have 
to "get ready'' for that. 

Perhaps the most important general reason 
for the prevalence and increase of non-attend- 
ance is simply that the majority of people have 
already been trained — sometimes overtrained — 
in Christian principles, through the public 
schools and the Sunday-schools and the daily 
and periodical press and our thoroughly Chris- 
tianized literature. In America and Europe the 
atmosphere is saturated with Christianity; the 
masses of the people could not get away from it 
if they wanted to. And although there is much 
left to be improved, their general average of re- 
ligious and ethical training is already high; and 
they ask, quite naturally (on the current basis 
of always getting and never giving), why they 
should continue to go to church. They send 
their children to Sunday-school, and value 
highly its training for them; but for themselves 
they do not feel the need of further formal in- 
struction. And as for the "instinct of worship" 



THE WAGE EARNERS 49 

— ^whatever it Is, the masses of the people have 
it not. 

Josiah Strong has observed that Sunday- 
school children rarely become church-goers, 
and he believes It to be the "fault" of the Sun- 
day-schools. It Is not, however, due to any de- 
fect In the Sunday-schools; for It Is their very 
efficacy which has made church-going, in the 
eyes of many, superfluous. Unfortunately, there 
Is no feeling of poignant spiritual need for either 
moral exhortation or worship on the part of the 
average workingman. It Is exceedingly difficult 
to persuade him, honest and charitable and con- 
scientious as he usually is, that he is really suf- 
fering for want of the constant ministrations of 
the church. The very success of the churches 
In Christianizing civilization Is the chief obsta- 
cle In their way to-day. They have done their 
work so well that to the average superficial 
observer It would appear that they are no 
longer needed. 



CHAPTER III 

CONCLUSIONS AND QUERIES 

IV/rR. MOODY once said: "The gulf between 
the churches and the masses is growing 
deeper, wider, and darker every hour." Mr. 
Charles Booth was so thoroughly impressed 
with the utter hopelessness of the whole situa- 
tion that he wrote :^ "Failure of all efforts 
almost drives one to the conclusion that there 
must be something actually repellant to the 
people in the pretensions of religion or in the 
associations of Christian worship." This is the 
hopelessly pessimistic conclusion from the facts. 
On the other hand, it is often said that non- 
church-goers are not necessarily irreligious; the 
claim is even urged that "the workingman is 
naturally religious." ^ He is said to be aHen- 
ated not from religion or from Christianity, but 
from its professors and from the churches. The 
reHgion of the churches, it is alleged, is not the 
religion of Jesus. " It will be the religion of Je- 

* Bcx)th, /. c, ii, 79; cf. Perry, /. c, 627. 
2 Stelzle, /. c, 40. 

SO 



THE WAGE EARNERS 51 

sus," says Mr. Crapsey,* " and not that of the 
churches that will regenerate the world. The 
clerical order is losing influence not because the 
world is growing less religious, but because it is 
more religious than it was sixty years ago. Re- 
ligion is not dying out but changing the mode of 
operation from the churches to the street, the 
shop, the market, the common council cham- 
ber." This is the optimistic reaction to the same 
facts. 

Dr. Mathews pessimistically admits that there 
are some individuals not hostile to religion; ^ 
at the other extreme the evangelist Mr. Stelzle 
says that the workingmen are responding to the 
church's appeal; that "the workingmen honor 
Jesus Christ" ^ in the narrow theological sense 
which that phrase has for him. On this subject 
there is an opinion which is worthy of consider- 
ation: "The Jesus who is applauded by the 
average workingman is a minimized Jesus 
Christ, a fictitious person, not the Christ of the 
Gospels." * 

But more important than this conflict of opin- 
ions is the fundamental question: Has religion, 
has Christianity, a real message to the working- 

* Shailer Crapsey, /. c, 140, 281. 
^ Shailer Mathews, /. c, 140. 

^ Stelzle, /. c, 39. 

* Perry, /. c, 629. 



52 THE CHURCHES 

men of to-day ? Is there that in the working- 
men which will respond to such a message when 
properly presented ? Will or can the churches 
present it to them in such a way that they will 
respond to it ? These questions will be consid- 
ered in the final chapters of this book. 



PART II 

THE ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCHES 

TOWARD THE WORKINGMEN, 

AND ITS RESULTS 



PREAMBLE 

Part I of this study, which had to do with the 
extent and the causes of the alienation of the 
workingmen from the churches, had necessarily 
to consider the many and various charges 
against the churches urged by wage earners and 
their sympathizers in justification of their with- 
drawal. The more fundamental criticisms there 
urged were these: i, that the churches fail to 
insist on spiritual and social equality; 2, that 
in their anxiety for the future welfare of the 
workingmen they are oblivious of their more 
immediate and pressing needs; and 3, that in 
regard to the "social question," the churches are 
either ignorant of it, or are indifferent or hostile 
to the wage earners' movement toward social 
amelioration. 

In this Part we will consider the churches' 
answer, in theory and in practice, to these ob- 
jections. In reference to each of these points we 
will consider: i, the teaching of Jesus, which 
Christian churches may be assumed to accept as 
authoritative, so far as it can be ascertained; 
2, the present theory of the churches, supple- 

55 



56 THE CHURCHES 

menting or modifying the teaching of Jesus; 
3, a review (which may, for our purposes, be 
merely a very brief indication) of the activities 
of the churches, in pursuance or in contradiction 
of their theories; and 4, a criticism of their 
practice with reference to (a) its efficiency, and 
(b) its effect, favorable or unfavorable, on the 
attitude of the workers, which is of primary im- 
portance to the question in hand. 



CHAPTER I 

EQUALITY 
I. Spiritual 

npHE conviction of Jesus that in the sight of 
the Father every man's soul is as precious 
as any man's soul, and that every one is worthy 
of salvation as a son of God, is obvious on the 
face of the Gospels. The dictum of Paul that 
"in Christ" all are one, which has been inter- 
preted as another expression of this spiritual 
equality, has been accepted, in theory, through- 
out the history of the Christian Church, and is 
to-day insisted on from every pulpit and in 
every theological work. But through it all the 
careful observer will see that the theory has 
been given a peculiar twist; that, in fact, it is 
taken to mean that all souls are equal in their 
need of salvation^ and not by any means in their 
actual spiritual value. The whole missionary 
endeavor of the church is based on the assump- 
tion of spiritual inequality; the distinction be- 
tween the saved and the unsaved, the redeemed 

57 



58 THE CHURCHES AND 

and the damned, the orthodox and the heretical, 
the Christian and the heathen — in short, a sep- 
aration of the people into classes, the "sheep" 
and the "goats." EvangeHstic campaigns, the 
incessant appeals to "join the church," etc., 
necessarily insist on a difference between those 
out and those in; and this distinction is accent- 
uated by the various forms and conditions of 
admission to the churches. Periods of proba- 
tion, rites and ceremonies in the nature of an 
initiation, all emphasize the difference between 
the church member and the non-church mem- 
ber. 

This distinction is inevitable if the churches 
are to fulfil their mission as saviors of men. If 
the man out is as good as the man in, organized 
proselyting enthusiasm is at once paralyzed. 
But it is a distinction nevertheless, and is un- 
questionably felt as an invidious one. The 
appeal of the churchman to the outsider is an 
appeal to the latter to raise himself to the spir- 
itual plane of the former. "Spiritual pride" is 
a universal sin, and is easily recognized, even 
though it take the form of excessive humility. 
On matters of equality the workingman of to- 
day is sensitive. He will not be patronized. 
He resents any one's assuming a superiority, 
even the superiority which is necessary to help- 



THE WAGE EARNERS 59 

fulness. And he resents it all the more when 
this assumed preeminence is exhibited by those 
who are no whit better in their lives, whose con- 
sciences are not in the least more tender, than 
those they are seeking to convert. It is not al- 
ways clear to the workingman that the church- 
man's plane is really higher than his own. 

Even the right of the preacher to speak with 
authority is vigorously contested by the un- 
churched. A lady whose father was a Ger- 
man atheist, and who is now herself the editor 
of a prominent German periodical published 
in America, once said: "Why should I go to 
church, or help support one } I have never yet 
heard from a minister anything which could be of 
more value to me than my own father's training, 
or which gave evidence that the ministers' claim 
of authority was well founded." The clergy no 
longer have the monopoly of learning, of phi- 
losophy and of ethics, or of experience, or even 
of religious feeling, which formerly gave them 
authority. 

2. Social 

That Jesus was a democrat and held a doc- 
trine of social equality has been frequently as- 
serted, but it seems to me without sufficient 
warrant. That he consorted equally freely with 



6o THE CHURCHES AND 

the Pharisees and with the harlots is true; but 
that was because their need of him was equally 
urgent. That, on the other hand, he recognized 
social distinctions is evident from the episodes 
involving the Samaritans: his original instruc- 
tions to his disciples, on their missionary tour, to 
devote their attentions to the Jews exclusively, 
and his choice of the despised Samaritan in the 
parable to accentuate the selfishness of the Le- 
vite. It cannot be shown that Jesus was in any 
way interested in political equality as we under- 
stand it, or that even the conception of it en- 
tered his mind. Paul certainly knew nothing of 
it; his recognition of slavery and his numerous in- 
junctions of submission to the constituted author- 
ities of his day are anything but democratic. 

The churches of history, however, have rein- 
terpreted this teaching in terms of the polity 
current in their own times and countries. In an 
absolutist society the churches teach the divine 
right of kings; in a democratic government, 
democracy. Luther was a monarchist, Calvin 
a republican. In America, in the aristocratic 
South of ante-bellum days, the great planters 
were naturally expected to occupy the best seats 
in the churches; in democratic New England, 
Dr. Gordon says: "Social and class distinc- 
tions in a Congregational church are intolera- 



THE WAGE EARNERS 6i 

ble." * Professor Ely, an American Episcopalian, 
extends this dictum to all churches; and the Pres- 
byterians, from Knox to Stelzle have always 
clamored for "more democracy." Methodism 
has been democratic since its inception. The 
churches, they say, should be the social centres 
of the community, in which all grades and 
classes meet on an equality. Actual distinc- 
tions of classes are to be ignored or denied. 

Occasionally writers are betrayed into slips 
like these: "The church must not forget her 
mission to the rich^';^ "it is the church's duty 
to reach the very lowest in the city"; ^ but this 
is an entirely unintentional intrusion of fact into 
the theory. Rarely does one find a frank state- 
ment of the underlying truth, such as this of 
Mr. Cochran's :* "It is by recognizing classes 
that the church can fuse humanity into a great 
brotherhood." It is only by recognizing differ- 
ences of endowment and of culture that the 
churches of to-day can effectively correlate 
themselves with the facts, and contribute to the 
progress of a genuine equality. 

For it must not be forgotten that the spirit of 

1 Cited in E. L. Heermance, "Democracy in the Church," 151. 

2 Strong, /. c, 291. (In all these quotations the italics are 
mine.) 

^ Stelzle, I. c, 107. 
* Cochran, /. c, 446. 



62 THE CHURCHES AND 

equality which has been evidenced in the 
church since its beginning, vague, indefinite, 
and unacquainted with its own aim, is quite 
different from the spirit of modem poHtical de- 
mocracy. At St. Martin's, near Buckingham 
Palace, "cabinet minister and crossing-sweeper 
kneel side by side," and there are innumerable 
cases of free admixture of classes in churches, 
Catholic and Protestant; but this has never been 
meant as an inculcation of the doctrine of social 
equality, nor has it ever been taken as such. 

That the churches do actually disregard any 
assumption of social equality is well known and 
often admitted. It is only natural that associa- 
tions of people with a certain standard of intel- 
lectual and financial attainment should gather 
together other people of the same class, while 
other congregations with other standards should 
also have their particular followings. Preach- 
ing adapted to a middle-class congregation is 
not suitable, in form or in content, to the poor; 
the two classes cannot be kept permanently to- 
gether, ^s things are, under the same minister. 
If the minister attempts to meet the "lower" 
class on their own level, he is disapproved of by 
the social censors of his church,^ and often by 

* For an amusing case where the deaconesses disapproved, see 
Booth, /. c, ii, 75, 78. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 63 

his clerical brethren; if he does not, they leave 
the church. 

The moving of city churches "up-town" 
shows unmistakably that they are class churches. 
The churches are occupied by the well-to-do 
denizens of the residence sections, and missions 
are started down-town for the poor. And then, 
instead of leaving the poor to run their missions, 
the wealthy contributors who support them step 
in and control them, and the churches' actual 
disregard of democracy becomes once more fully 
apparent. 

No matter how necessary, on grounds of 
efficiency and expediency, this neglect of theo- 
retical democracy may be, its effect upon the 
people is bad. For, first, there is the too obvious 
contrast between the professions and the prac- 
tices of the churches. Second, no one likes to 
have his actual social subordination impressed 
upon him more than is absolutely necessary; it 
hurts, and it breeds a hatred of the conditions 
which make it possible. In the third place, the 
people have a strong and growing feeling in 
favor of democracy and social equality; they 
insist that in the long run they are the most ex- 
pedient and the most efficient; they have, in 
fact, made a religion of them. And finally, the 
people object to the churches' theory of equality 



64 THE CHURCHES 

because when it is preached at all it is preached 
as a fact in the face of circumstances which 
make it seem ironical and cruel, instead of as an 
ideal as yet far from realization, but to the at- 
tainment of which all energies should be bent. 
In short, in the matter of social as of spiritual 
equality, the churches have occupied an illogical 
and indefensible position, asserting it to exist 
where it does not exist, and recognizing its oppo- 
site at times when and in places where equality 
should be insisted upon. 



CHAPTER II 

CHARITY 

AS the recognition of spiritual inequality was 
^ responsible for the churches' great mis- 
sionary work, and the admission of social ine- 
quality suggests their present opportunity, so 
the acknowledgment of another inequahty, too 
patent to be ignored — the economic — is at the 
basis of their other great work, charity. In their 
philanthropic activities, the distinction between 
rich and poor has had to be admitted; and at 
this point we enter upon the second part of our 
subject: The churches' answer to the charge 
that they have neglected the more immediate 
wants of the poorer classes. 

I. The Old Way 

Charity is so bound up with the teaching of 
Jesus and with the practice of the churches 
through all ages that any discussion of Christian 
theory on the matter would be superfluous. 
"Charity was one of the earliest, as it was one 
of the noblest, creations of Christianity," writes 
Lecky.* There may be question as to whether 

* W. E. H. Lecky, "Rationalism in Europe," II, 236. 
65 



66 THE CHURCHES AND 

Jesus enjoined charity for the sake of the giver, 
as has been generally assumed, or for the sake of 
the recipient, or for both; but there is no ques- 
tion of the Christian obligatoriness of "caring 
for the poor." Of late years, in view of the evils 
of indiscriminate alms-giving, to v^hich v^e shall 
soon advert, there has appeared a demand that 
the churches apply the principles of "scientific 
charity," or even that they w^ithdraw entirely 
from the province of material relief and coop- 
erate v^ith the charity organizations by attend- 
ing to spiritual needs while the latter attend to 
the material.* This is suggested rather as a 
modification of their practice of charity than as 
an abandonment of it.^ There is certainly no 
general tendency in the Christian Church at the 
present time to depart from its custom of ma- 
terial help to the needy, which has never been 
broken since the beginning of the church's his- 
tory. In the Middle Ages, "so far as cases of 
individual hardship went, the church strove to 
defend the weak and to diminish the sufferings 

* Edward T. Devine, "Principles of Relief," 323, 329; George 
B. Mangold, "The Church and Philanthropy," Ann. Ant. Ac, 
Nov., 1907, p. 94. 

'^ R. J. Campbell (/. c, 165) says: "Charity is worse than useless; 
systematically practised it is a demoralizing influence. " So far as 
I know, this expression is unique, coming from a clergyman. Cf. 
on the merits of the practice, Lecky, /. c, 236. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 67 

of the poor"; * and no one questions that it 
does the same to-day. "Never was this sense 
of responsibility for the poor so profoundly felt 
by t«he Christian church as at the present time." ^ 

But the efficiency and wisdom of the churches' 
charity work are being very seriously ques- 
tioned. Philanthropic activities carried on in 
a haphazard way are not always beneficent. 
Perhaps as much harm as good has been done 
by indiscriminate giving. The thrifty have been 
taxed to support the lazy in vice and thriftless- 
ness, perhaps more often than the worthy have 
been put in the way of their own economic sal- 
vation. The administration of charity is beset 
with difficulties which the churches are seldom 
in position to overcome. 

Churches in America and in England have 
passed through some disheartening but instruc- 
tive experiences in this connection.^ Their 
efforts at the betterment of conditions have 
sometimes, in their ignorance of the working of 
economic forces, resulted only in making them 
worse. Free shelters are provided in London 
for the homeless; as a result tramps are at- 
tracted to the city in hordes, swelling the great 



* Alfred Marshall, "Principles of Economics" (4th ed.), 28. 

'Peabody, /. c, 232. 

' See Devine, /. c, 32$ ff.; Booth, /. c, passim. 



68 THE CHURCHES AND 

"reserve army'* of unemployed unskilled labor 
and reducing wages throughout the city. 
"Church charities help low prices of goods by 
subsidizing underpaid workers," ^ thus con- 
tributing directly to the maintenance of the 
sweating and other parasitic industries. In- 
sufficient wages of women and children, and 
even of men, are made up by help from the 
churches, and unscrupulous "contractors" and 
task-masters get the benefit. 

The churches have not erred on the side of too 
little attention to the immediate material needs 
of the poor; they have given not wisely but too 
well. Their zeal has been far in excess of their 
knowledge. And they have sometimes shown a 
lamentable lack of appreciation of the help they 
could get from cooperation with trained charity 
workers. They seem still to have that unwar- 
ranted suspicion of modern methods which was 
voiced by Boyle O'Reilly in those famous lines: 

" Organized charity scrimped and iced 
In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ."^ 

^ Sidney and Beatrice Webb, "Industrial Democracy," 755, note. 
2 John ioyle O'Reilly, "In Bohemia." That he really knew bet- 
ter, cf. this: 

"Benevolence befits the wisest mind; 
But he who has not studied to be kind, 
Who grants for asking, gives without a rule, 
Hurts whom he helps, and proves himself a fool." 

— Wheat Grains. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 69 

Even the Salvation Army, which is in a situation 
peculiarly favorable to a clear view of the work- 
ing of individual relief, is accused of inefficiency 
and of failure to cooperate with charity organ- 
izations.* 

The bad influence of this exhibition of ineffi- 
ciency on the people, who find their lodges and 
unions, "secular" agencies, superior in their 
handling of what the churches used to claim as 
their specialty, is further aggravated by the 
spectacle of relief used as a means of maintain- 
ing church attendance or membership — a spe- 
cies of religious bribery, as Booth calls it. Free 
breakfasts are provided on Sunday mornings for 
men who are expected in return therefor to 
attend divine service immediately afterward. 
There is a medical mission in London where, 
while the patients are waiting to see the doctor, 
a bright gospel service is held, and the hearers 
are directed to the Great Physician. No prayer, 
no pills. In congested districts, where the com- 
petition between churches becomes intense, con- 
tests of charity are sometimes set up, each 
church going to and beyond the limits of its re- 
sources with inducements such as free meals 
and lodging, free coal and blankets, free con- 

* C. C. Carstens, "The Salvation Army — A Criticism," 30 
Ann. Am. Ac.^ 553. 



70 THE CHURCHES AND 

certs for adults and free toys for children. A 
more efficacious breeder of scoffing could not 
well be devised. 

2. The Institutional Church 

The kind of relief thus far considered is usu- 
ally administered by tender-hearted individuals, 
or by committees of a few women, with an occa- 
sional man for emergencies. But with the enor- 
mous growth of charitable work which has ac- 
companied the growing competition of the 
churches with each other and with the forces of 
ahenation, the work has had to be organized, 
institutionahzed; and now we find in the great 
cities three highly developed forms of church 
relief organization: the institutional church, 
the mission, and the religious (and secular) 
settlement. 

The institutional church is the outgrowth of 
the movement of city population noted above. 
When the old members move away from the 
down-town church, and hordes of strangers, 
usually foreigners, move in, the church finds 
that its old methods cease to attract, and it must 
find new ones or close its doors. It becomes 
"institutional." Its theory is quite simple. 
It finds that it must direct its appeal funher 
than to the "religious instincts" of the people 



THE WAGE EARNERS 71 

with whom it has to deal; it must cater to their 
social and material demands, which constitute 
so much larger a portion of their lives.* It must 
show the community that it is interested in the 
whole man. It must meet the competition of 
the cheap theatre, the pool-room, and the saloon. 
It tries to provide a place of innocent pastime 
and social intercourse for workingmen and 
women and children. It makes itself further 
useful and attractive by the addition of classes 
of all sorts, industrial and literary. Gymna- 
sium and physical culture, together with nurses 
and physicians, free clinics and dispensaries, 
attend to health. Finally, for those in need of 
immediate relief, it provides free employment 
bureaus, free legal advice, pawn shops, "per- 
petual rumage sales," provisions and coal at 
cost, etc. 

The down-town city church must be insti- 
tutional: for only the institutional church, with 
its club and other social features, and its edu- 
cational and recreative and relief activities, can 
reach the neighboring population. The churches 
must take note of the gradual change in the 
family system going on in parts of the city 
where everyone "rooms," and they must meet 

* Cf. Crapsey, 7. c, 296: "We are trying in a pitiful way to get 
back into real life through what we call the institutional church." 



72 THE CHURCHES AND 

it by changing methods adapted to families to 
those adapted to individuals. 

The principle of the institutional church has 
usually met with commendation, but occasion- 
ally it is objected to. Ardent evangelists hint 
that it is offered as a substitute for spiritual en- 
thusiasm. Organization is alleged to be easier 
than inspiration. The unquestioned expen- 
siveness of the work also brings criticism upon 
it — although Mr. Stelzle shows how an institu- 
tional church can be run on jSioo a year. And 
it is seriously urged by practically everyone who 
has studied their working that these churches 
cannot take the place of evangelization; that in 
them the distinctively personal religious motif 
is apt to be lost sight of. This objection, how- 
ever, is really based upon a misapprehension, 
due to the meagreness of visible results. It 
overlooks "the diflFerence between an inspira- 
tional and an institutional centre: (i) large con- 
gregations once or twice a week; (2) the same 
people in small groups many times during a 
week." ^ The latter system reaches just as 
many people as the former, but of course in a 
less conspicuous way. In the best institutional 
churches each worker, teacher, and director is 

* Judson, "The Church in Its Social Aspect," 30 Ann. Am. 
Ac, 436. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 73 

chosen not only for his ability in his special de- 
partment, but also for his religious persuasive- 
ness, and at every step he is expected to keep the 
ultimate religious aim in view. This insures the 
continuous bringing to bear of religious influ- 
ences in a pervasive way, which cannot help but 
get results which are more certain and lasting 
than any which follow the electric touch of the 
transient evangelist. 

The subject of the organization, methods, 
range of activities, and distribution of institu- 
tional churches ^ is interesting and important, 
but its treatment would require a volume in it- 
self. Millions of dollars and thousands of lives 
are poured into this work. There is scarcely 
a slum district to be found in England or 
America, or in the large cities of France and 
Germany, where the institutional church is 
not. Certainly no one who knows anything of 
the subject can question the greatness of the 
effort the churches are making to help the 

* There is as yet no adequate and comprehensive treatment of 
this subject. The best sources within my knowledge are: for 
England: Booth, "Life and Labor in London," Part III, 7 vols.; 
for America: Judson, "The Institutional Church," Judson, 
"The Church in Its Social Aspect," 30 Ann. Am. Ac, 436; Wm. J. 
Kerby, "Social Work in the Catholic Church, ibid., 477; Hodges 
and Reichert, "The Administration of an Institutional Church"; 
"Annual Reports" and other publications of St. Bartholo- 
mew's, St. George's, and Judson Memorial, New York, and of 
Morgan Memorial, Boston. 



74 THE CHURCHES AND 

poorer classes through this channel. We pass 
to a consideration of its results. 

The material helpfulness of these activities is 
obvious. They reach and relieve minor cases 
with a directness and an efficiency which "or- 
ganized charity" cannot equal; and in larger 
matters their tendency is more and more to 
apply the canons of scientific relief. And, on 
the whole, their spiritual efficacy must also be 
admitted, though it is somewhat harder to as- 
certain. The influence of these churches is 
probably larger than appears. The people as 
a rule transfer to their homes the lessons learned 
in them. Personal hygiene, sanitation, im- 
provements in cooking and housekeeping, are 
unconsciously absorbed and applied, to say 
nothing of lessons in courtesy, patience, and 
kindliness. Booth notes that conditions in East 
London, where institutional churches abound, 
have vastly improved in the last twenty or thirty 
years. He attributes this, however, to the school 
training and to the devoted lives of some of the 
clergy, rather than to the direct influence of the 
institutional churches. The best results are 
reached from work among the children. Boys* 
clubs and Sunday-schools help street children 
in every way, physically, mentally, and morally. 
Boys* Brigades are sometimes successful in 



THE WAGE EARNERS 75 

social work. These activities are often instru- 
mental in breaking up the demoralizing "gangs" 
into which street children gather. Work in- 
tended to reach and reform the more depraved 
classes of adults is less successful. The attempts 
to improve the character of the common lodging 
houses in London are said to be a complete fail- 
ure. In Boston and New York the immediate 
neighborhoods of the churches are sometimes 
cleared of vicious resorts, but the inmates are, 
as a rule, only driven to other parts of the city. 

As to the effect on the churches themselves, it 
is everywhere evident that institutional work 
raises their spiritual tone. Their methods, de- 
manding the voluntary cooperation of large 
numbers of workers, get old and young inter- 
ested in philanthropy in a practical way, with 
the best of effects on the characters of those 
who engage in the work. 

But as to the response of the people sought, 
there is not so much certainty. Dr. Strong cites 
statistics to show that institutional methods in- 
crease church membership; ^ but where mem- 
bership carries with it certain extra privileges, 
and reductions from regular prices for provi- 
sions, tickets, etc., the nature and value of such 
increase are questionable. Boys' and men's 

» Strong, /. c, 245. 



76 THE CHURCHES AND 

clubs sometimes bring good results, as do also 
Mothers' Meetings; the social opportunities 
offered are sometimes "a good bait." Occasion- 
ally those who avail themselves of these advan- 
tages feel that they ought, out of gratitude, if for 
no other reason, to "join" the church. Work 
on the little children is extremely effective every- 
where in securing attendance, at least while 
they are still children. The attendance at in- 
stitutional Sunday-schools is remarkable; even 
the indifferent send their children to them. 
The kindergartens also are effective in securing 
children from the tenements. The eagerness of 
all classes of people to send their children to 
Sunday-schools and church kindergartens is 
their unconscious but great tribute to the value 
of religious instruction at some period in life. 

But Charles Booth's investigations in London 
throw the emphasis on the other side of the 
story. He reports that in one particularly bad 
section rough lives are controlled, restrained, and 
blessed by the care of the Catholic Church, but 
are rarely improved morally or materially. The 
religious influence on boys in the Church Army 
Home is practically nil. The Strand is over- 
visited and over-relieved, but spiritually un- 
touched. He concludes that on the whole the 
influence of the Gospel is over those who work, 



THE WAGE EARNERS 77 

and only to a very small extent over those for 
whom they work. He reports even a half-hearted 
response to the churches' offers of material and 
social help. He tells of great neighborhood 
parties, where 300 people would be invited by 
streets; 80 would come, and out of these 80 one 
would go to church. Even a soiree dansantey 
limited exclusively to communicants, was un- 
successful. The attractions of warmth, light, 
and music, which would draw a man into a sa- 
loon any time, fail to get him into church. It is 
harder to get workingmen to attend a free^^lec- 
ture in a church than in a town hall. Church 
clubs for workingmen are sometimes success- 
ful; but they must be strictly secular; and the 
decided tendency is for the church to become 
an adjunct to the club, sometimes the "par- 
son" being ruled out altogether. 

Strong's statistics to the effect that institu- 
tionalization helps church attendance are not 
borne out by the testimony of active workers. 
Thus Dr. Judson,* one of the ablest institu- 
tional leaders in New York, says: "I am in- 
clined to think that institutionalism is a handi- 
cap to church progress." One important rea- 
son for this is that people do not care to attend 
the church where charity is held out to them; 

* Judson, 30 Ann. Am. Ac, 438, 440. 



78 THE CHURCHES AND 

it is likely to be a constant reminder of scenes of 
suffering and humiliation. As a rule, institu- 
tional churches which carry on an immense and 
important work have very small Sunday con- 
gregations. If those whom they help affiliate 
themselves with any church, they do it else- 
where. 

On the whole, one must conclude that al- 
though the institutional churches have magnifi- 
cently exonerated organized Christianity from 
the charge of failure to attend to the immediate 
needs of the poor, they have not, on the other 
hand, succeeded thereby in changing the atti- 
tude of the people toward the churches. The 
laborer accepts the churches' benefits with more 
or less gratitude; but he has not granted any 
larger share of respect to their faith or their 
worship. He is as indifferent as ever. A visitor 
in London was told " not to worry : if the peo- 
ple wished to go to church they would do so; if 
they did not, they would stay away." Other 
visitors reported to Booth : " Give a man his pot 
and pipe and he will be best pleased." "They 
perhaps prefer the church to the Hall of Science, 
but what they really want is to be left alone." 
Certainly this desire to be left alone has not 
been much altered, in London or elsewhere, by 
the institutional church. One is almost forced 



THE WAGE EARNERS 79 

to agree with Booth, as one looks over the whole 
field, that the old system of personal relations 
between the pastor and his people was more 
effective, so far as church attendance is con- 
cerned, than the new elaborate machinery of 
institutionalism. 

3. The Mission 

The distinction between the mission and the 
institutional church is usually difficult to draw, 
and sometimes does not exist at all in any re- 
spect except administration. A mission is usu- 
ally an adjunct to a "regular" church, main- 
tained in the slum end of town by the wealthy 
people at the other end, and governed by the 
latter. Its work ordinarily includes some or all 
of the activities of the institutional churches, 
and, in addition, a more aggressive campaign of 
"visiting," the whole work being also suffused 
with a greater glow of evangelical fervor. It is, 
perhaps, the special emphasis on evangelization 
which really distinguishes the mission from the 
institutional church. The impulse for the move- 
ment came from Lord Shaftesbury, who was Pres- 
ident of the great Casters Mission in London until 
his death. Rescue work for men and women, 
special missions for all classes, including chil- 
dren and cripples, lodging house and kitchen 



8o THE CHURCHES AND 

missions, and special evangelistic services of all 
kinds, are indications of the range of their activi- 
ties over and beyond the usual institutional work. 

As for results, our evidence again comes 
mainly from England. Booth reports that in 
the case of one typical great mission an indi- 
vidual is now and then won to a better life, but 
in the main its efforts are wasted, or worse than 
wasted. Not that the salvation of a single indi- 
vidual is an insignificant matter, but that it does 
not seem proportional to the effort expended. 
In the opinion of an old lady district visitor their 
influence in low streets, where the most strenu- 
ous efforts have been made, is very small. The 
indifference to lodging house and kitchen mis- 
sions is marked; their chief value is to those 
who do the work. The most substantial result 
of the activity of the missions, according to 
Booth, is in the better appearance of the chil- 
dren in their districts. Their open-air services 
are not successful. They are specifically 
charged by Stelzle with failure to adjust them- 
selves to their surroundings, and with neglect of 
the immediate interests of their members. Their 
efforts are misdirected. 

The efficiency of the Salvation Army, which 
is practically a series of missions, has been seri- 
ously questioned, especially on the ground of 



THE WAGE EARNERS 8i 

disproportionateness of results to efforts and 
expenditure. It is also believed that the Salva- 
tion Army, even more than other missions, has 
unduly neglected the sociological possibilities of 
its work; and also that it is recklessly regardless 
of the canons of scientific charity. On the other 
hand, the Salvation Army is, from the points of 
view of honesty, of tenacity of purpose, and 
of large-scale results, unquestionably the best 
administered and most successful missionary 
enterprise of which we have knowledge. 

The failure of the missions to draw the masses 
into direct affiliation with them is practically 
complete. They have not made the slightest 
dent in the hard shell of popular indifference. 
The people prefer the churches to the missions, 
and if they go anywhere at all they go to the 
churches. 

Absence of democracy in the management is 
one reason for this failure. People do not favor 
the absentee landlord system extended to their 
spiritual homes. It is also possible that the 
practice, sometimes resorted to, of converting 
drinking and dancing saloons into missions and 
retaining their old names, "Paddy's Goose," 
"The Mahogany Bar," etc., is not conducive to 
the highest respect for the church. It does not 
degrade religion to popularize it; but it is a seri- 



82 THE CHURCHES AND 

ous mistake to associate it too intimately with 
those things to which the best instincts of hu- 
manity, even in its lower manifestations, have 
an invincible antipathy. 

4. The Settlement 

The settlements stand in a class by them- 
selves; for, with a few exceptions, it is their 
consistent policy, as in Mansfield House, Toyn- 
bee Hall, and others in London, and the innu- 
merable settlements in America, to avoid any 
distinctively "religious" activity, in the usual 
formal sense of the term. Their spirit is the 
same as that of the best in organized religion, 
but their methods are so diflPerent that they have 
preferred not to acknowledge any affiliation. 

This policy has been hotly contested. It is 
said that the settlements should not ignore the 
religious problem, "for there is no morality 
apart from religion." * And so it is insisted 
that every settlement should be a "Christian" 
settlement; or, at least, that there should be 
some settlements specifically "religious" in 
their nature. "One of the greatest problems of 
the Christian settlement," says Mr. Evans, "is 
to find out how genuine Christianity can be 

* Thomas S. Evans, "The Christian Settlement," 30 Ann. Am. 
Ac, 484. • 



THE WAGE EARNERS 83 

effectively introduced into the individual and 
social life of a community blindly prejudiced 
against everything that bears the name of 
Christian." A Christian settlement should not 
attempt to be denominational. It is not a prop- 
aganda station. It should win the people to 
Christianity and then let them choose their own 
form of worship and church connection. In this 
way the settlements would be contributing some- 
thing toward the support and upbuilding of the 
churches from which they have drawn so much 
of their inspiration: they would be helping 
"religion." 

But, on the other hand, it has been well 
pointed out * that a discussion of the relations 
of the settlements to religion depends upon the 
definition of religion. A settlement like Toyn- 
bee Hall is assuredly not irreligious, though it 
abstains from definite religious teaching. So- 
cial settlements among the immigrants in Amer- 
ica have been well called "essentially religious 
in their nature." ^ Lyman Abbott says : ^ "The 
religion of the Middle Ages was piety without 
humanity; it built cathedrals and burnt here- 

*Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch, "The Settlement's Relation 
to Religion," 30 Ann. Am. Ac, 490. 

' John R. Commons, "Races and Immigrants in America," 219. 

3 Lyman Abbott, "The Outcast," Ow//ooife, Vol. LXXXIX, p. 
616. 



84 THE CHURCHES AND 

tics. The religion of the twentieth century is 
humanity without piety; it maintains great 
charities, but is not remarkable for its church- 
going. The latter is the more Christly religion 
of the two." Religion within these latter years 
has been given a broader definition, and is made 
to include "any group action which commands 
the best and the most of us." ^ By this defini- 
tion settlement work, which commands the un- 
selfish devotion of valuable lives organized and 
cooperating for the uplift of humanity, is most 
certainly religious. According to Stein ^ the 
function of religion in the future will be the 
perfection of the Man-type. It is in this work 
that the settlements are now engaged. This 
new definition, which is at present much more 
likely to win the approval of the sociologist 
than of the theologian, is, nevertheless, the con- 
ception which has the future before it. Its career 
of conquest is already begun : settlement work- 
ers, no matter from what church or creed they 
come, become speedily socialized. 

The efficiency of the "secular" settlements is 
enormous in comparison with the failure of the 

^ This definition gives a basis to Mr. Crapsey's contention 
(/. c, 305), that the Preamble to the Constitution of the United 
States is a statement of religious principles. 

2 Lud\\ig Stein, "Die Soziale Frage im Lichte der Philosophic," 
673- 



THE WAGE EARNERS 85 

"religious" agencies we have been considering; 
and this fact cannot fail to have left its impress 
upon the popular mind. The new kind of reli- 
gion "works," while the old, in some particulars 
at least, does not; and the people have made 
their choice pragmatically, as they usually do. 
It is observed even that when a religious settle- 
ment, such as Oxford House, attempts to en- 
force "reHgion" in its clubs, the effort fails. It 
almost appears that the masses of the people 
have no use whatever for "religion" as the term 
has been until now generally understood. 



CHAPTER III 

THE SOCIAL QUESTION 

AIT'HEN the workingmen are asked why, in 
the face of such efforts in their behalf as 
we have been surveying, they are still antago- 
nistic to the churches, their reply is likely to be 
to the effect that these efforts, though com- 
mendable in their intention, fail to get at the 
root of the difficulty. They may, at the best, 
reach and relieve some of the aspects of pov- 
erty, but they do not touch poverty itself The 
churches work on individual cases, and the 
basis of their ethics is individualistic; but, say 
the people, the disease is a social disease, and 
ethics should be primarily social. Christianity 
was rejected by Mazzini and by Frederic Har- 
rison on account of its selfish individualism. 
This is "the sociological age of the world";* 
and the questions in which people are inter- 
ested are no longer theological, but sociological. 
The "social movement" is the people's move- 
ment; it is their religion; its problems are ulti- 
mately religious problems, and many men are 

* Strong, /. c, 130. 

86 



THE WAGE EARNERS 87 

glad to recognize their religious aspects. In 
fact, "there is so much religion in the labor 
movement that some day it will become a ques- 
tion whether the church will capture the labor 
movement or the labor movement capture the 
church." ^ It appears rather to be a question 
whether the church will capture the people, the 
majority of whom are laborers, and regain its 
hold in the world, or whether it will allow them 
to organize their own social religion in their own 
way. For as religion in the past grew out of 
social ideals, so it may again in the future. 

Hence it becomes of the utmost importance 
for the churches to determine their right rela- 
tions to the social question, and, when found, to 
maintain them. What should be their attitude 
toward social reform and politics ? What is 
their present practice ? These questions we 
will consider now; the subject of social revolu- 
tion will be dealt with in Part III. 

I. The Teaching of Jesus 

In seeking to ascertain the attitude of Jesus 
toward the social question one must bear in 
mind that the problem was never presented to 
him in the sense in which we understand it. 
The labor problem of to-day is largely ethical 

» Stelzle, /. c, 29. 



88 THE CHURCHES AND 

and religious, and to that extent it may fall 
within the purview of Jesus's teaching; but it 
is also an economic problem, the factors of 
which are a very recent development in history. 
It began with the "industrial revolution," the 
sudden wide application of steam power to in- 
dustry, and the rise of the factory system; and 
as to this phase of it, Jesus could have had noth- 
ing to say. 

There is too much of a tendency among writ- 
ers on this subject to-day to rely upon half-true 
generalizations. Thus, any such general state- 
ment as that "the Bible upholds the dignity of 
labor," ^ is not only unhelpful but is also to a 
degree untrue; for it depends upon which part 
of the Bible is in mind. The Bible begins with 
the proposition that labor was inflicted upon 
mankind as a punishment and a curse. Simi- 
larly, the statement so often made that the He- 
brew religion was primarily social ^ is also partly 
untrue, because one-sided. The Mosaic legis- 
lation was, of course, as legislation for a com- 
munity, social.^ "The Bible is the most 
democratic book in the world;" * true enough, 

^ Cochran, /. c, 441. 

^J. A. Leighton, " Jesus Christ and the Civilization of To-day," 
56; Walter Rauschenbusch, " Christianity and the Social Crisis," 8. 
^ Fairbairn, /. c, 124. 
* Stein, /. c, 674. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 89 

if one is careful about his "texts." It has also 
been made to support the divine right of kings 
and the institution of human slavery. It is true 
that there is a social aspect of Hebrew prophecy,* 
and, perhaps, a subordination of individual to 
social elements in Hebrew songs; ^ but it would 
not be at all difficult to show that Old Testa- 
ment ethics, like any ethics, was and must be 
both social and individual: individual in its 
aim, social in its results. Hence, to prove that 
Jesus was the successor of the prophets is not 
necessarily to demonstrate that his ethics was 
purely social. 

An exclusive stress laid upon either the social 
or the individual phases of Jesus's teaching is 
sure to be misleading, for the gospel contains 
both. Half of Jesus's preaching is a social mes- 
sage — it may even be granted, temporarily, that 
the Second Commandment was intended as a 
practical working principle to control the organ- 
ization of human society — but the First Com- 
mandment still remains on the books, and that 
half of the gospel deals with the personal rela- 
tions of individuals with their God. Christian- 
ity defined religion in terms of social service, as 
well as in terms of personal holiness; but it did 

* Ross, /. c.y 60. 

^ Richard T. Ely, "Social Aspects of Christianity," 151. 



90 THE CHURCHES AND 

not mean to distract attention entirely from the 
necessity of personal holiness. Service and self- 
sacrifice are primary qualities in Jesus*s eth- 
ics,* and they are both necessarily social vir- 
tues; but it must not be overlooked that they 
are also virtues which must necessarily be prac- 
tised by individuals, and to which individuals 
must be converted before society can be bene- 
fited by them. Social service, in short, is not the 
whole of Christian righteousness, though it is a 
very necessary and a hitherto unduly neglected 
part of it. 

There is a similar one-sidedness about the 
current estimates of Jesus's attitude toward the 
rich and the poor. The prophets were cham- 
pions of the poor.^ Jesus had natural affinities 
to the lowly. ^ "The poor were the people with 
whom Jesus most clearly identified himself" * 
Property was of little value in his eyes.^ 
These statements are all true, so far as they go; 
the sympathy of Jesus for the unfortunate can- 
not be exaggerated. As Dr. Peabody says: 
" Jesus bears the burden of the poor always on 
his heart." But when Nitti writes that "for 

* Peabody, "Jesus Christ and the Christian Character," 199. 
^ Rauschenbusch, I. c, 11. 

3 Ibid., 82; Adolf Harnack, "What is Christianity?" 100. 

* Washington Gladden, "The New Idolatry," 128. 

* Crapsey, /. c, 46. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 91 

Jesus poverty was an indispensable condition 
for gaining admission to the kingdom of 
Heaven," ^ and when Rauschenbusch adds to 
this that Jesus was opposed to wealth on social 
grounds, they are manifestly going beyond what 
the records warrant. The story of the "rich 
young man," which is fairly representative of 
the teachings of Jesus on this subject, shows 
that when the acquisition or possession of great 
wealth became a hindrance to the highest per- 
sonal and social development of the individual, 
Jesus opposed it, not as wealth, but as a hin- 
drance.^ 

Did Jesus possess the "revolutionary con- 
sciousness" claimed for him by recent writers, 
following in the track of Renan and the social- 
ists.? ^ According to Nitti,* "we are bound to 
admit that Christianity was a vast economic 
revolution more than anything else." Crapsey 
says that the attitude of Jesus toward the State 
was hostile.^ Herron writes:® " The Beatitudes 
are the most revolutionary political principles 
ever stated." On the other hand, many author- 



* F. S. Nitti, "Catholic Socialism" (Eng. Tr., 1895), 58. 
^Peabody, "Jesus Christ and the Social Question," 210. 
' Cf. below, p. 106. 

* Nitti, /. c, 64, citing Ernest Renan, "Marc AurHe," 598. 
^ Crapsey, /. c, 42, 48. 

* George D. Herron, " The Christian Society," 53. 



92 THE CHURCHES AND 

ities assert that Jesus was not a revolutionist/ 
Again we find part truth and part error, a mis- 
take of emphasis. Jesus led no revolt against 
the constituted authorities of his time; but he 
did give utterance to principles which, if con- 
sistently practised, could not but revolutionize 
society in some of its aspects, then as now. 
"Jesus is not a social demagogue, he is a spir- 
itual seer." ^ He devotes himself not to the 
alteration of environments but to the amend- 
ment of personalities. That this process should 
work out eventually to the reformation of soci- 
eties is not primary but incidental to Jesus's 
purpose. 

That Jesus was not an economist, that he laid 
down no programme, there has been so far no 
one hardy enough to deny. Even those who in- 
sist that the spirit of economic reform is to be 
found in his teaching, make no claim to discov- 
ering its method there. "Jesus had no eco- 
nomic theories, no interest in industrialism," 
says Campbell,^ "he laid down no directions for 
the administration of the ideal state, or the 
guidance of the individual in his social relation- 
ships: his idea was supernatural revolution, not 

^ Harnack, /. c, 102; George B. Stevens, "New Testament 
Theology," 117; Leighton, /. c, 106. 

2 Peabody, /. c, 208. 

3 Campbell, /. c, 86, 176. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 93 

social evolution." Jesus was not concerned 
with political or economic organization; whether 
he intended even to found a church is question- 
able, and to me the evidence against seems to 
preponderate.* That he is not responsible for 
the modern conception of church organization 
must certainly be admitted by every one. 

That Jesus was not primarily interested even 
in the ethical aspects of economic questions has 
been strongly maintained. "The teaching of 
Jesus is not a doctrine of economic justice and 
equitable distribution," says Peabody;^ "it ex- 
pands into the greater problem of spiritual re- 
generation and preparedness." Jesus regards 
"not comfort but character as the object of 
economic change." It is not the Christian dis- 
tribution, but the Christian getting of gains, 
which is important. The gospel is not con- 
cerned with material wants.^ Jesus was inter- 
ested more in the duties than in the rights of 
men; his teaching is based on their fundamental 
needs,* which are spiritual. This view, held by 
able men and on good grounds, also seems to 
me to err from one-sided emphasis; it overlooks 

* Stevens, /. c, 135; Weiss, "Lehre Jesu," 156; Wendt, "Lehre 
Jesu," 180. 

2 Peabody, /. c, 215, 313, 223. 
^ Harnack, /. c, passim. 

* Shailer Mathews, "Social Teaching of Jesus," 177, 181. 



94 THE CHURCHES AND 

a fact suggested by the last sentence: that man's 
material needs are in a sense as fundamental as 
his spiritual. We are not concerned with the 
needs of disembodied spirits. Nor must it be 
ignored that the distribution of wealth among 
the factors involved in its production is a hu- 
man activity, as well as the acquisition of 
riches; and the principles of ethics and of 
Christianity must, to be consistent, be applied 
as well to one as to the o'ther. Jesus was not 
interested in the mechanism of distribution; he 
could have known nothing of it as it exists to- 
day; but that does not exempt it from the ap- 
plication of the test of his spirit. 

It has been said that Jesus's social teaching 
is implicit in his account of the kingdom of 
God.* Perhaps no conception in the entire 
range of our sacred literature has suffered such 
violence of contrary and irreconcilable inter- 
pretation as this idea of "the Kingdom of God." 
It has been described as a social ideal, a model 
on whose lines society should be organized. On 
the other hand, it is said to be a purely spirit- 
ual ideal, a metaphorical name for all those 
who are members of God's family. By way of 
compromise, it is suggested that there is a social 
motif in it, but that Jesus aims beyond this 

»D. S. Cairns, "Christianity and the Modern World," i86. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 95 

social aspect, and its outcome is a mystical 
union of the members of the Kingdom in the 
Body of Christ, the Church. There are scores 
of variations on these three themes. 

The resolution of this discord would seem to 
be a matter for the exegetes. The Gospels are 
not at all clear, definite, or consistent on the 
subject; and there has developed recently a 
tendency to read almost any ideal into the con- 
cept. Scholars, however, are coming more and 
more to the opinion that its meaning varied 
from time to time in Jesus's mind; at one time 
it was an external kingdom, to be realized in 
the near or remote future, in heaven or on 
earth; at another time, it was the collective 
name for those who recognized their spiritual 
kinship; in other words, it was sometimes po- 
litical and sometimes spiritual, sometimes tem- 
poral and sometimes eternal, in its significance. 
On the whole, the idea is altogether too vague 
for us to draw any definite conclusions from it. 

The residuum of this brief discussion may be 
stated thus : The teachings of Jesus are both in- 
dividualistic and social; individualistic in so 
far as they are concerned with the relations of 
each soul to its Father; social in so far as they 
deal with the relations of souls with each other. 
His sympathies were with the poor, and he had 



96 THE CHURCHES AND 

no prejudice against wealth merely as wealth. 
He was not a reformer or a revolutionist of the 
external type; he had no economic or political 
programme; he was interested primarily in in- 
ternal, spiritual reformation. 

2. The Churches^ Present Theory 

The churches to-day are, theoretically, in 
substantial accord with this position, although 
they have not until recently been much inter- 
ested in the social side of Jesus's teaching. So- 
cial religion is in reality a new experience, as 
"social ethics" is a new science. The churches* 
hymns, dating from the older days, are pre- 
dominantly individual. 

The progress of the new social feeling has not 
been easy or unchallenged. For instance, a re- 
cent writer has felt moved to enter a protest in 
favor of a reinstatement of emphasis on spir- 
itual individuality,^ alleging that a life of serv- 
ice would solve all problems, and that a true 
life for the individual, conscientiously lived, is 
itself truly social. Society, he urges with con- 
siderable force, would necessarily be uplifted 
through the elevation of the individual. The 
more modern attitude, however, and the one 

^ Leighton, "Jesus Christ and the Civilization of To-day"; cf. 
also Crooker, "The Church of To-day." 



THE WAGE EARNERS 97 

which is slowly but surely occupying the whole 
field, is that the church should work through 
the individual not alone as an individual, but 
as a cell in the social organism. But it is still 
generally insisted that, though the reformation 
of society is the ultimate goal, regeneration of 
the individual must come first, for two reasons: 
I, society is made up of individuals; 2, the in- 
fluence of the church, by which the reformation 
should be achieved, is dependent upon the per- 
fection of its individual members. 

But among the more radical there is a strong 
and growing feeling of the inadequacy of this 
programme. The "simple gospel" is not suffi- 
cient. Love of one's enemies, "resist not evil," 
may be good individualistic ethics, but they 
have no place in the modern world. An indi- 
vidualistic religion is not adequate to to-day's 
needs. The churches are in error in looking to 
the sinner rather than to the "sinned against"; 
it must be recognized that the sinner is to 
some extent a product of circumstances. The 
churches do well to insist that a Christian must 
be a philanthropist; but they should not glory 
in their charitable institutions and endeavors so 
long as they leave the causes of destitution and 
suffering untouched. Nor, it is insisted, can the 
churches hope to elevate modern society merely 



98 THE CHURCHES AND 

through the elevation of individuals. Social 
evils demand social treatment. 

The real meaning of the current insistence 
upon the essentially social nature of Christian 
ethics is found in this remark: "We should be 
interested both in the improvement of environ- 
ment and the strengthening of character." * 
When Professor Ely says that Christianity is pri- 
marily concerned with this world and its social 
relations, and Mr. Stelzle proposes that the 
church must handle clearly the social problems 
of to-day, and the theologically minded Dr. 
Mathews writes that the church should teach 
the intimate relationship of God to social facts 
and forces, they all mean that the old exclusive 
emphasis on the training of the individual char- 
acter, the cultivation of holiness, must be sup- 
plemented by attention to the environment in 
which that character must be developed, and 
that such attention must be accompanied by all 
reasonable efforts, individual and collective, to 
make the environment more favorable to both 
material and spiritual improvement than it now 
is. That the church should demand justice in 
the wage-scale and righteousness in politics, as 
well as personal purity, is an illustration of the 

* Judson, "The Church in Its Serial Aspect," 30 Ann. Am. 
Ac, 447- 



THE WAGE EARNERS 99 

new attitude. Mr. Crapsey says:* "The re- 
ligion of the state has to do with the salvation 
of the community, hence is greater than the re- 
ligion of the churches, which has to do with the 
salvation of the individual"; and the churches 
now propose to meet the criticism by assuming 
the salvation of the community. 

And so it is felt more and more that the 
churches should be organized on such a plan as 
to give their ministers opportunity for social 
study and social work; they should be the cen- 
tres of social activities; it is their duty to know 
in detail the social structure of their neighbor- 
hoods; even the Sunday-schools should each 
have a specific social function. 

Not that the churches are bound to advocate 
any particular social theory. As religious 
organizations, they have nothing to do with 
economic programmes. It must be clearly un- 
derstood that the church endorses only so much 
of the present social system as is in accordance 
with Christian principles, and that it con- 
demns all that is contrary thereto. It is not 
concerned with the method of economic re- 
form. It cannot advocate any specific "rem- 
edy" except under abnormal conditions where 
the need is clear and urgent, and the operation 

* Crapsey, I. c, 307, note. 



100 THE CHURCHES AND 

and efficacy of the proposed remedy beyond 
dispute. It is possible, however, to consider the 
existence of any evil conditions eo ipso an 
urgent demand for their removal; in that case 
the churches would find themselves obligated to 
take a hand in all promising reforms. This is 
the attitude of "Christian socialism"^ in its 
best estate; but most churchmen would not go 
so far. They would be content to have the 
churches cooperate with other active agencies 
by the formation of an ethically trained public 
opinion. In the meantime they must inculcate 
a greater respect for law and order than has 
distinguished some reform movements of late 
years. They must also on occasion emphasize 
their traditional method of social regeneration 
through the individual, especially where an 
evil can be traced to its source in individual 
wrong-doing. 

The best principle to govern the churches' 
treatment of proposed reforms would seem to 
be to apply to them first the ethical tests at their 
disposal, in the pulpit and in the press, and 
thus train the people to apply such ethical tests 
for themselves. In cases where the need for 
specific measures is pressing and their justifica- 
tion evident, the churches might reasonably be 

* Kaufmann, "Christian Socialism," i8. 



THE WAGE EARNERS loi 

expected to take an active and energetic and, if 
necessary, a leading part in securing their adop- 
tion. 

Though the churches should not attempt to 
make themselves the chief beneficiaries of re- 
form, it would only be the part of a wise expe- 
diency for them to recognize their own vital in- 
terest in the solution of the social question. 
Social amelioration and spiritual opportunity go 
together. Comfortable homes, shorter hours of 
labor, physical and social well-being, mean will- 
ing ears and open hearts, a fruitful field for the 
church-worker. In these days the full church 
is more than likely to accompany the full din- 
ner-pail. Moreover, social betterment is bound 
to come anyway; and the churches would bet- 
ter be found on the side of the common people, 
its main beneficiaries, when the victories arrive, 
rather than opposed to them: not merely for 
the sake of full churches, but to save the face of 
organized religion. 

The hope of society is generally felt to lie in 
greater respect for the common good, in regard 
for the commonwealth. This hope has an 
ethical quality which should appeal to the 
churches, if they are properly constituted; the 
success or failure of its appeal is being applied 
by the most inexorable observers as a test of the 



102 THE CHURCHES AND 

present worthiness of the churches. There is 
an insistent demand for a rehgion which should 
find its best expression not in individual salva- 
tion or worship, "in postures and impostures," 
but in an enthusiasm for humanity.^ Humanity 
in the mass is looking to the churches to-day to 
see if that religion is to be found in them; and 
it is a critical and challenging and undeceivable 
humanity which is conducting the examination. 

3. The Churches^ Present Practice 

A broad review of the history of the social 
activities of the churches would show that in 
general they have done just about what they 
understood to he their duty, in each age.^ Dif- 
ferences in accomplishment are due to differ- 
ences in conception of duty at different periods. 
When the churches thought they ought to re- 
lieve the poor, they have done so; when they 
understood that they must direct the policies of 
nations, they did so; to-day they are carrying 
on many reform movements ^ of greater or 
less importance, but of the kind their teachings 
approve. Get them to understand what they 

^ John Stuart Mackenzie, "Social Philosophy," 81. 

2 For history of social activities, see Rauschenbusch, "Chris- 
tianity and the Social Crisis." 

^ For convenient presentation of data, see W. F. Crafts, "Prac- 
tical Christian Sociology," especially the appendices. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 103 

ought to do, and in the long run they will be 
found doing it. There is no point in their social 
history at which the churches can be honestly 
charged with inconsistency of practice and the- 
ory (except in the matter of equality), still less 
with wilful neglect. The trouble has always 
come, not from any failure in the performance 
of their duty as they understood it, but in their 
misunderstanding of their duty, viewed in the 
light of the most advanced conceptions current 
in each period. The churches have always been 
slow in " finding" themselves in their contirtually 
changing environments. 

Thus when it is charged that the churches 
have neglected to insist on their social teaching, 
the objector means that they have not caught 
up with the broad conception of their social 
duty now held by a few leaders. This is com- 
paratively innocuous. But when it is added 
that the churches have stood in active or latent 
opposition to needed reforms,^ this is a direct 
allegation of unpardonable misunderstanding of 
duty in a matter of vital interest to the people. 
That the charge is true cannot well be denied. 
In England the opposition of the churches to 
political reform in the '30's cost them the alle- 
giance of millions. When sanitary factory leg- 

*Lecky, /. c, II, 128. 



104 THE CHURCHES AND 

islation was being agitated, it was opposed by 
the "theologians attributing the workingmen's 
ill-health to the Act of God." * The prohibition 
of women's working in the mines was brought 
about by philanthropists on moral grounds, but 
not by the churches on religious grounds. And 
to-day it is fairly true that the churches' voices 
have not been heard very plainly for reforms 
that threaten profits, no matter how obvious the 
humanity and justice of the proposed reform 
may be. The wariness with which the churches 
handle the evils of child-labor, the sweat-shops, 
corporational and political "graft," and even (in 
some cases) of intemperance, has been too often 
observed by those who are not the churches' 
friends, and not often enough by those who are. 
In fact, there are but two movements on 
which the churches in general have taken a de- 
cided stand, temperance and Sunday (miscalled 
Sabbath) observance. They have too often dis- 
torted the former by intemperance and exag- 
geration. They have not shown zeal enough in 
the provision of adequate substitutes for the 
saloon, which has been hitherto the one means 
of exhilarating sociability the workingmen's 
means and opportunities permit. The working- 
men are also prone to observe that the over-con- 

* Webb, "Industrial Democracy," 356. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 105 

sumptioh of alcohol (their pet fault) Is the only 
over-consumption which receives the extended 
attention of the pulpit. The reckless and inso- 
lent flaunting of ill-gotten gains in the eyes of 
the hungry masses which characterizes an in- 
creasing number of notorious metropolitan social 
functions does not appear to have aroused any 
great enthusiasm of clerical opposition, as yet. 

As to Sunday observance, the people feel that 
if the churches would devote as much energy 
toward securing shorter hours and more half- 
holidays during the week, as well as one rest- 
day in seven for those the nature of whose work 
permits of no universal intermission on one day, 
as they do to restricting, in accordance with 
obsolescent puritanical notions, the choice of 
his recreation on Sunday, they would be showing 
at once a sounder view of the case and a friend- 
lier attitude toward the toilers. The clergy must 
sooner or later recognize that to provide the 
means for a Sunday afternoon outing to a work- 
ingman and his family is an "act of mercy." 
Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the 
Sabbath for the workingman. 

For underlying the churches' failure in their 
economic and social relations with the laborers 
is their ignorance of social and economic laws. 
Their charities fail to work any permanent 



io6 THE CHURCHES AND 

good, because they attack only the symptoms 
and results and not the causes of social disease. 
"The church's social work," says one of its 
representatives,* "is directed more toward 
effects than toward causes; toward personal 
action on the individual rather than on social 
forces; toward the spiritual more than the tem- 
poral. The church is quick and tender in car- 
ing for the aged poor, yet she is not conspicuous 
in demanding old-age pensions, etc." It is ex- 
actly in this inconspicuousness that the com- 
plaint of the people lies. "A hundred ways of 
service, visitation, and relief, the advocacy of 
temperance and recreation, the provision of the 
social settlement and of the institutional church, 
illustrate the expansion of the work of religion 
into the sphere of the social movement. Yet 
these Christian activities, beautiful and fruitful 
as they are, and testifying as they do to the vi- 
tality of the Christian religion, cannot be re- 
garded as presenting in themselves a solution of 
the modern social question." ^ 

It is very encouraging to note that "the past 
decade has witnessed a really remarkable 
arousal of the Christian conscience in behalf of 



» Kerby, "The Social Work of the Catholic Ckurch in Ameri- 
i," ^o Ann. Am. Ac, 475. 
* Peabody, /. c, 29. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 107 

the toiler," * at any rate among a few in the 
churches' vanguard of thinkers. This interest 
in the workingmen's movement is due largely to 
the impetus given it by Maurice and Kingsley 
in England, renewed a few years ago in America 
by the work of Professors Ely and Peabody.^ 
The case of Hugh Price Hughes, and of the re- 
cent Pan-Anglican Conference, is an example 
of the growing interest of the English churches 
in the social question; and American churches 
are becoming more sympathetic and intelligent 
in regard to it. In Germany the Evangelical 
Social Congress has been organized among the 
churches for the express purpose of connecting 
them more intimately with the social movement. 
Ideas originating in the ranks of labor are being 
voiced, more or less unconsciously, but none the 
less significantly, from almost all pulpits. The 
churches are beginning to realize that society 
must be saved, even if only for the sake of the 
individuals who compose society. 

But, unfortunately, the churches are almost 
irreparably belated in their interest in the prob- 
lem; they have waited so long that the work- 
ingmen have long since concluded that they 

* Cochran, /. c, 454. 

^ Cf. the number of recent English works on this subject given in 
the BibHography at the end of this volume, with the list given by 
Peabody, "Jesus Christ and the Social Question," 67, note. 



io8 THE CHURCHES AND 

could not be depended upon, and that they 
were in fact opposed to the whole movement. 
Take the labor unions, for example. They are 
in general, or were until very recently, convinced 
that the churches are hostile to them. They 
have heard their methods consistently criticised 
from the pulpit; but seldom have they heard 
their aims or ideals encouraged. The fact that 
one of their favorite and most indispensable 
methods, that of mutual insurance, was first 
proposed by a leading Baptist clergyman in 
1 8 19 does not help the matter, for the church 
ignored it. The hostile criticisms of another 
clergyman, in 1824, received far more attention 
and support. 

Within recent years the Presbyterian and 
Protestant Episcopal churches in America have 
taken official notice of the trades unions, after 
the latter had been in prominent existence for 
more than a century. The Presbyterian Church 
has established a " Department of Church and 
Labor" for the special purpose of the study of 
the social question.* The department at pres- 
ent seems to consist of a superintendent, a com- 
petent thinker and an energetic and successful 

* Stelzle, "The Presbyterian Department of Church and "La.- 
hoT," ^o Ann. Am. Ac, 458; also Stelzle, "Christianity's Storm 
Centre." 



THE WAGE EARNERS 109 

worker, who travels and lectures and visits labor 
unions and church conferences: a sort of 
"travelling chair of Christian sociology," as he 
calls himself. He has established a system of 
exchange of "fraternal delegates" between some 
churches and unions, and the result in every 
case is a much more cordial feeling between 
them.* Some unions have even created the 
office of " chaplain," to provide a specific func- 
tion for the visiting minister. This exchange 
system has been formally endorsed by the 
American Federation of Labor. The depart- 
ment was also largely instrumental in securing 
the observance of "Labor Sunday," which is 
helping to win again to the churches the atten- 
tion of the workingmen.^ 

The Methodist Quadrennial Conference of 
1908 has taken specific action in regard to the 
most pressing social problems of to-day by the 
adoption of a platform which places that church 
easily in the forefront of the socio-religious 



* Outlook, June 6, 1908, "The Presbyterian Assembly." 
^ The Methodist Preachers' Meeting and the Baptist Conference 
of Boston recently took steps in the same direction (Mass. Labor 
Bulletin, No. 55, p. 209), and it is probable that the example of 
the Presbyterian Church will be widely imitated. At the Baptist 
Convention of 1908 a Commission was appointed, including 
Shailer Mathews and C. R. Henderson, to study and report to the 
denomination as to what the churches are doing along lines of 
social service (Outlook, June 13, 1908). 



no THE CHURCHES AND 

movement. The statement reads as follows: 
"The Methodist Episcopal Church stands: 

" For equal rights and complete justice for all 
men in all stations of life. 

"For the principle of conciliation and arbi- 
tration in industrial dissensions. 

" For the protection of the worker from dan- 
gerous machinery, occupational diseases, inju- 
ries, and mortality. 

" For the abolition of child labor. 

"For such regulation of the conditions of 
labor for women as shall safeguard the physical 
and moral health of the community. 

" For the suppression of the * sweating system.' 

"For the gradual and reasonable reduction of 
the hours of labor to the lowest practical point, 
with work for all; and for that degree of leisure 
for all which is the condition of the highest 
human life. 

"For a release from employment one day in 
seven. 

" For a living wage in every industry. 

" For the highest wage that each industry can 
afford, and for most equitable division of the prod- 
ucts of industry that can ultimately be devised. 

" For the recognition of the Golden Rule, and 
the mind of Christ as the supreme law of society 
and the sure remedy for all social ills." 



THE WAGE EARNERS in 

This comprehensive and unequivocal declara- 
tion of Christian principles is a model of frank- 
ness and dignity which cannot be too highly 
commended. It has been adopted, with some 
additions (of questionable value), by the Fed- 
eral Council of Churches at its meeting in De- 
cember, 1908, at Philadelphia.^ When all the 
churches shall have become permeated with the 
spirit exemplified in this platform, and the 
masses of the people shall have become aware 
of the fact, there will be no problem of the 
alienation of the masses. 

These recent developments are encouraging; 
but one must be on his guard not to be misled 
by such statements as that "the workingmen 
are responding to the churches' appeal," and 
that "prominent labor leaders are members of 
the church," into the erroneous idea that the 
breach between the churches and the wage 
earners is near healing. The abyss of prejudice 
and mutual misunderstanding between them is 
beginning to be filled. They are becoming bet- 
ter acquainted with each other, and their mutual 
respect is beginning to grow. But a gap which 
has been decades broadening and deepening 
cannot be filled in a few months or years. 

* Outlook, Dec. 19, 1908, p. 849, " The Social Conscience of 
the Churches." 



112 THE CHURCHES AND 

Occasionally the church has had to do with 
arbitration in labor disputes, but in so small 
a way that its effect on the attitude of the public 
has been insignificant. In general, it remains 
true that "in the conflict between capital and 
labor neither the capitahst nor the laborer has 
any use for the minister." ^ Sometimes a min- 
ister may be found on the Australian wage 
boards.^ The Standing Commission of Capital 
and Labor of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 
which was appointed to act as a board of arbi- 
tration when invited to do so, was not once 
called on during 1 901- 1904, a period particu- 
larly marked by great strikes and lockouts. A 
clerical arbitration board once appealed to in 
Chicago charged such exorbitant fees for its 
services that both sides were disgusted, and that 
ended the possibilities of its usefulness in that 
city. Such experiments cannot be expected to be 
successful until the average minister's knowl- 
edge of economics and sociology is far wider 
than it is now. 

The problem of the immigrant is assigned by 
the Presbyterian Church to its Department of 
Church and Labor, thus recognizing its social 
bearings; but, as a rule, the churches' mission- 

* Crapsey, I. c, 277. 

'Webb, "Industrial Democracy" (2 ed.), xxxviii. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 113 

ary work among the immigrants, which is ex- 
tensive and highly organized/ follows along the 
old individualistic and evangelistic lines. The 
aim seems to be to stem the tide of alienation, 
where possible; and, failing that, to convert the 
Catholics into Protestants — ^which helps the 
Protestant annual statistics of membership and 
does not materially injure the Catholics '. No 
very impressive success is reported. The Cath- 
olics hold the immigrants to some extent. The 
best work among them seems to be done by the 
institutional churches, which teach them Eng- 
lish, find them employment, act as a general in- 
formation bureau, etc. 

* For details and statistics, see Grose, "Aliens or Americans?" 



CHAPTER IV 

GOVERNMENT 

'IXT'E cannot close this part of our study with- 
^ ^ out a consideration of the churches' atti- 
tude toward politics and the state. In the 
interpretation of Jesus's teaching on this as on 
all other subjects there is the widest variety of 
opinion. Through all periods of history there 
have been some who have found the details of 
governmental organization laid down in the 
gospels, patent to all except (of course) those 
who are wilfully blind. Thus, within recent 
years it has been said that a gingerly treatment 
of Jesus's political principles is a sign of the 
degradation of the pulpit.^ The Sermon on the 
Mount is the letter, the statute-book, of the 
Christian constitution of society. If so, govern- 
ment should be the primary interest of the 
preacher of Christianity; his aim must be to 
mould the constitution of society into conform- 
ity with the political ideas of Jesus. 

It is tolerably certain, however, that Jesus 
was not interested in politics in any more than 

* Herron, "The Christian Society." 
114 



THE WAGE EARNERS 115 

an indirect way. His political theories, if he 
had any, should be found illustrated in his idea 
of the Kingdom of God; but, as we have seen, 
this idea is so obscure and uncertain that it is 
not much help. Scholars are generally agreed 
that the conception of the Kingdom of God was 
even less political than economic; ^ that Jesus 
did not have in mind primarily a political resto- 
ration. " The Gospel is not a bill of rights, for 
the mission of Christ had no political charac- 
ter," says Nitti.^ 

Jesus was rarely brought into direct contact 
with the government of his period, and when he 
was, his attitude was merely one of enforced 
submission to it. It does not appear that he 
had any of Paul's manifest respect for the 
state; his ideal of service was, in fact, a rever- 
sal of the current state-craft; but there is no 
evidence that he took a direct part in altering it. 
He appears to have sharply distinguished be- 
tween the functions of religion and those of the 
state. The latter was merely one of the external 
data with which the religious man must reckon, 
as he reckoned with the forces of nature, but 
which, under the then conditions, was as remote 
from his control as the tides or the lightning. 

* H. H. Wendt, "Teaching of Jesus," 364. 
'^Nitti, "Catholic Socialism," 58. 



ii6 THE CHURCHES AND 

But the recent extension of the definition of 
rehgion has forced it to include politics also. 

Politics is group action devoted to the further- 
ance of well-being through the forms and activi- 
ties of organized government. Political and re- 
Hgious thought are, therefore, but forms of each 
other. All questions of state are questions of 
religion. "\Miile religion is more than politics, 
politics is religion. A church might better omit 
to apply the principles of Christ to ever}ahing 
else than to politics." ^ Others not so radical 
agree that politics is or should be a moral mat- 
ter, and is, therefore, legitimately for the church 
to handle. The state is, by its nature, grounded 
in religion.^ It is the expression of the solidarity 
of humanity, a solidarity based on cooperation 
and brotherhood, and demanding the religious 
concept of the Fatherhood of God as its neces- 
sary foundation.^ Thus, by merely broadening 
the traditional conception of religion, govern- 
ment is seen to be part of it. 

The democratization of government, by en- 
larging the sphere of the people's moral activi- 
ties, has, at the same time, widened the sphere 

* Crapsey, /. c, 3CX3. 

2 Franz von Baader, "Ueber die Zeitschrift Avenir" (Werke, 
VI, 31), 41- 

^ Ludwig Stein, "Die Soziale Frage im Lichte der Philosophic," 
661. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 117 

of the preacher, bringing within his jurisdiction 
the matters of government in which he and his 
people are necessarily involved. And further, 
inasmuch as legislation is one of the most effec- 
tive means of securing certain reforms, the 
churches may, on occasion, have to champion 
legislation. They have the same right to influ- 
ence the making and the enforcement of the law 
that any other bodies subject to it have, and, 
when necessary, they should cooperate with 
organized political influences in that behalf. 
While it is somewhat of an exaggeration to say 
that "whatever government the ministers want 
the ministers can have," ^ still it is partly true. 
The ministers stand in a position where clearness 
and definiteness in their attitude on political 
questions must be extremely influential; and 
this possible influence for good should not be 
wasted. The policy of restricting their interest 
in city government to such matters as closing 
saloons on Sunday is distinctly evil, while we are 
still subject to the ravages of civic corruption. 

In the opinion of many, it is the religious duty 
of the churches to take an active part in politics 
and government.^ On the other hand, it is urged 



* Crapsey, /. c, 276. 

^ Crapsey, /. c; Rauschenbusch, /. c; J, R. Commons, "Social 
Reform and the Church." 



ii8 THE CHURCHES AND 

that reforms are not a matter for the church, 
but for church members ; that the church should 
not become a power in poUtics, though the 
church member should. The church is not con- 
cerned with legislation. The science or art of 
politics is quite outside its jurisdiction. It is 
likely to do more harm than good by meddling 
in government, and it is wiser to leave politics 
alone. * The tendency of advancing civilization 
is toward the complete separation of church and 
state; history has decided against their union.^ 
As usual, there is justification in both views, 
and the truth seems to lie between them. In 
our contemplation of the numerous evils which 
have been associated with the activities of the 
church in the affairs of government, we are very 
prone to overlook or forget the enormous power 
for good the church has thus been enabled to be. 
In the past "every new religion has either cre- 
ated a new type of society, or transformed the 
old." The Christian Church first transformed 
the religion and life of Roman society, and was 
then itself converted by the governmental tra- 
ditions of that society into a hierarchical repre- 
sentative republic, and thus became responsible, 
in an indirect way, for the modern democratic 

* Shailer Mathews, "The Church and the Changing Order." 

2 Lecky, /. c. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 119 

conception of government. The hierarchical 
overshadowed the democratic elements in the 
Middle Ages, and the rulers, outside the towns, 
utilized the theocratic caste so as, on the whole, 
to retard the growth of strength among the 
lower orders of the people. But in the inter- 
minable struggles of those days the Papacy was 
often on the side of the people against the kings; 
and with its fall the idea of the divine right of 
kings rose unrestricted to its culmination in 
Northern Europe. The Reformation, notwith- 
standing this effect, was, on the whole, demo- 
cratic; for although its theology was thoroughly 
autocratic, it reintroduced in its organization the 
republicanism of the early Christian churches.* 

Democracy in America owes much to the 
direct participation of the Reformation churches 
in politics; as much credit is due to the congre- 
gational form of church government as to the 
town meeting; and yet it is in America that the 
motto: "Religion and politics have nothing to 
do with each other," is most fully enforced. 
The degradation of "practical politics" is partly 
responsible for this; but, on the other hand, the 
aloofness of the churches is also partly respon- 



^ See Fairbairn, Heermance, Crapsey, Rauschenbusch (works 
already cited), and especially Emile de Laveleye, "De Tavenir des 
peuplescatholiques," 16/. 



120 THE CHURCHES AND 

sible for the degradation of politics. Here the 
churches have utterly failed to connect the gos- 
pel with the government; here, by a public 
opinion made up mainly of indifference on the 
part of the "decent" public, and moulded 
largely by the venal newspapers of corrupt 
"bosses," the ministers are most completely 
shut out from civic influence and political activ- 
ity. In London, where at times home politics 
and religion have been freely "mixed," it has 
been for the good of both. In Jersey City, New 
Jersey, under Mayor Fagan, and in Toledo, 
Ohio, under "Golden Rule" Jones, religion and 
politics were "mixed" to their great and mu- 
tual advantage. The prejudice against "mix- 
ing" them seems to be a survival from the days 
when the secular arm could be and was used by 
the church for purposes of persuasion; but that 
day has long since gone. If one looks now for 
the effects of the application of Christianity to 
legislation, when he finds them at all he will 
find them to be good. 

The whole matter resolves itself into one of 
far-sighted expediency. The churches should 
take a direct hand in politics when the moral 
issue is clear and where there ought to be no 
doubt on which side the churches stand. In 
this case nothing but good can result, both to 



THE WAGE EARNERS 121 

the government and the churches. On the other 
hand, when the moral issue is not clear, or 
where the difference is one of policy and the 
right is fairly distributed, the churches as relig- 
ious agencies can add nothing to the discussion, 
and can succeed only in alienating from them- 
selves those with whom they disagree. In such 
matters, where it is not a clear choice between 
right and wrong, it is wiser in most cases for the 
ministers to refrain from attempting to mould 
public opinion from the pulpit, no matter how 
expert they may be on the social or economic 
expediencies involved. It is not necessary, ordi- 
narily, and it may injure their influence in other 
matters. They must remember that, after all, 
their primary concern is not government but 
righteousness; and that "there is no political 
alchemy by which you can get golden conduct 
out of leaden instincts." ^ Such alchemy must 
be spiritual, if it exists at all. 

To summarize this part of our study: we have 
found that the churches have not been guilty of 
a divergence between their preaching and their 
practice, except in the matter of spiritual and 
social equality, in which case their theory was 

* Herbert Spencer, "The Coming Slavery," Pop. Sci. Mo., AprU, 
1884. 



122 THE CHURCHES AND 

so entirely out of harmony with the facts that 
variance was inevitable. In economic relations, 
the churches have believed in helping the poor 
individually, but not collectively; so we find 
charity conducted on an enormous scale, but 
seldom are the chuches seen attempting to go to 
the root of the matter in social and economic 
conditions. This performance of their duty as 
the churches see it has failed to touch the 
masses fundamentally, however, for two rea- 
sons: first, it has often been marked by ineffi- 
ciency and misdirection; second, it is felt that 
the churches' theory is wrong — ^that conditions 
ought to be ameliorated collectively; that the 
churches should attack poverty and other ma- 
terial evils in their causes and not only in their 
results. And finally, the churches' old-time 
beneficent activity in politics has been allowed 
to lapse, with the result that needed reforms 
have felt seriously the lack of their support; 
and further, the degradation of politics as it is 
practised is charged partly, if not mainly, to the 
churches having withdrawn from it and turned 
it over to the realm of the "secular." 



PART III 
CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM 



THE PROBLEM 

We turn now to the relations of organized 
Christianity to socialism, a point which we have 
postponed for separate discussion on account, 
first, of its intrinsic importance, and, second, be- 
cause there is at present an urgent need of a 
direct and plain discussion of a subject on which 
there is so much loose thinking and writing. 

The burden of much of the socio-ecclesiastical 
agitation of the day is that Christianity and so- 
cialism are identical; or that their aims, or, at 
any rate, their spirit, are the same. It is, there- 
fore, insisted that Christian ministers should sup- 
port the socialist movement, or, at least, should 
be in sympathy with it. Whereas the truth is 
that Christianity and socialism are diametrically 
opposite in method, aims, and spirit; that the 
Christian minister not only cannot support it 
consistently, but cannot even be in sympathy 
with it, and must oppose its extension for the 
same reason that he opposes the spread of pure 
materialism, or anything else which is entirely 

incompatible with the fundamental theses of 
125 



126 THE CHURCHES AND 

his religion. The plausible claims of socialism 
to the support of Christianity are based on a 
simple logical inversion, which will be discussed 
later. 

The false position here under examination is 
squarely stated in the Rev. R. J. Campbell's 
book, "Christianity and the Social Order." 
"The words of Jesus," he says, "may fairly be 
regarded as the spiritual presentation of the 
aims of modern socialism. Socialism is far 
nearer to original Christianity than the Chris- 
tianity of the churches. The objective of so- 
cialism is that with which Christianity began 
its history. Socialism is actually a swing back 
to the Gospel of the Kingdom of God ; the tra- 
ditional theology of the churches is a departure 
from it."^ The common objective of Chris- 
tianity and of socialism is the realization of the 
Kingdom of God on earth. As it has been put 
by a German scholar, Oscar Holtzmann,^ 
" there can be no manner of doubt that the fun- 
damental ideals of socialism are to be referred 
back to Jesus"; also by the Italian Nitti:' 
"the Christian ideal is in no way opposed to the 
socialistic ideal." 



» Campbell, /. c, 279, 19, 147, 173. 
2 Cited in Peabody, /. c, 287. 
'Nitti, "Catholic Socialism," 20. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 127 

There are two facts which, in the absence of 
adequate explanation, raise a prima facie case 
against these claims: first, the most represent- 
ative socialists are alienated from the churches 
and hostile to them and to Christianity; second, 
the churches are, with scarcely an exception, 
opposed to socialism. This mutual antago- 
nism may be due to mere misunderstanding, or 
it may be due to inherent incompatibility. But 
let us first consider the facts. 



CHAPTER I 

ATHEISTIC SOCIALISM 

COCIALISM is more than indifferent to spir- 
itual religion; it has become a distinct sub- 
stitute for it. Its organizations usually meet on 
Sunday, that being the only day of leisure its 
adherents usually have. It has regularly organ- 
ized Sunday-schools, in which the children are 
instructed, by the most approved methods of 
lesson leaves and catechism, in the fundamental 
principles of the economic creed. Evenings at 
the socialist clubs have taken the place of the 
old church meetings. It is said in the factories 
in Germany: "What Jesus Christ has been in 
the past, Bebel and Liebknecht will be in the 
future."* Says Le Rossignol:^ "In these 
days, when we have a psychology without a 
soul, let it not be thought strange that we have 
a religion without a god. Like most religions, 
socialism has its prophet and its book. The 

* Gohre, /. c, 112. 

^ James E. Le Rossignol, "Orthodox Socialism," 5; cf. Nitti, 
/. c, 22; also Yves Guyot, "La comedie socialiste," for humorous 
account of socialist parties, "Pope," etc. Guyot himself displays 
all the graces ( ?) of theological controversy. 
128 



THE WAGE EARNERS 129 

prophet is Karl Marx; the book is 'Capital.' 
Like all religions it has its creed, which the 
orthodox hold with the utmost dogmatism and 
intolerance." This attitude can have but one 
meaning: "The acceptance of social revolution 
as a religion is a practical indictment of the re- 
ligious teaching of the Christian church." * 
A man can have but one religion at a time. 

Although socialist programmes usually insist 
that " Religion is a private matter," ^ their most 
representative leaders have not hesitated to give 
frequent public utterance to their views on the 
subject. These expressions, in the absence of 
refutation by leaders at least as authoritative, 
must be taken as representative of the attitude 
of the party, "99 per cent, of which," says 
Morris Hilquit,^ "is agnostic." 

Although Karl Marx, in his "Capital," is 
rather guarded in his expressions on religion, it 
is evident he regarded it as an illusion, growing 

* Peabody, /. c, 298. 

^ That socialists themselves admit this expression to be an eva- 
sion is evidenced by the discussion at the Convention of the Amer- 
ican Socialist Party at Chicago, in 1908, at which the expression was 
rejected from the Platform. A delegate said (Chicago Daily So- 
cialist, May 16, 1908): "Religion is a sociological question, an an- 
thropological question, a question of chronology, of economics, of 
theosophy. There are few forms of modern thought that do not 
directly affect the question of religion, and when you say that it is 
merely a question of the private conscience, you fly in the face of 
the science and learning of your day." 

^ Chicago Daily Socialist, May 16, 1908. 



130 THE CHURCHES AND 

out of humanity's failure to comprehend rela- 
tions which are socially irrational and therefore 
logically incomprehensible. He says:^ "The 
religious reflex of the real world can, in any 
case, only then finally vanish when the practical 
relations of every-day life offer to man none but 
perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations 
with regard to his fellow-men and to Nature." 
August Bebel insists that there is no use in hav- 
ing any reUgion at all. "The revolution," he 
says,^ "differs from its predecessors in this, 
that it does not seek for new forms of religion; 
it denies religion altogether." It has no need 
for any of the ceremonies and symbols of relig- 
ious organization. Mr. E. Belfort Bax, prob- 
ably the most brilliant of the thorough-going 
English socialists, says,^ "the Positivist seeks to 
retain the forms after the beliefs of which they 
are the expression have lost all meaning for 
him. The socialist whose social creed is his 
only religion requires no travesty of Christian 
rites to aid him in keeping his ideal before 
him." 

In the socialist mind, "Science analyzes God 
like any other natural phenomenon," according 

1 Marx, "Capital" (Eng. Tr., Humboldt Pub. Co.), 33. 

' Cited in Peabody, /. c, 16. 

' Bax, "The Religion of Socialism," 52. 



THE WAGE EARNERS i^i 

to Yves Guyot/ a representative of the radical 
French school. " God is simply a psychological 
phenomenon. Instead of God having created 
man, it is man who has created God. Religion 
is insanity." The atheism of socialism was rec- 
ognized even by the "Christian Socialist," Pas- 
tor Todt, who thought that, with that exception, 
it was in conformity with the Gospel.^ It is 
taken for granted by Bebel, although he main- 
tains that it is not the product of socialism, but 
of the entire thought of the nineteenth century.^ 
"The socialist ideal will cease to have for its 
object God and another world, and be brought 
back to its original sphere of social life and this 
world." * There is a necessary conflict between 
civilization based on law and that based on 
religion.^ 

The religion of Jesus, according to more mod- 
erate socialists, has been completely perverted 
from its original intention, and the church, in- 
stead of being the poor man's institution, has 
become the exclusive property and support of 

^ Guyot, "Etudes sur les doctrines sociales du christianisme" 
(3d ed., 1892), xliii, 12, 20. This book displays throughout the 
most intense and partisan bitterness toward religion. 

' Peabody, /. c, 61; F. Mehring, "Geschichte der deutschen 
Sozialdemokratie," 2ter Auf., 2ter T., 2ter Abt., 131. 

^ Cited in Kaufmann, /. c, 194; cf., on circumstances which 
inevitably gave socialism an atheistic turn, Mehring, /. c, 128. 

* Bax, /. c, 36. 

5 Guyot, I. Cf V. 



132 THE CHURCHES AND 

capitalism. Thus De Laveleye says:^ "By a 
complete misapplication of its ideas, the religion 
of Christ, transformed into a temporal and sacer- 
dotal institution, has been called in, as the ally 
of caste, despotism, and the ancient regime, to 
sanction all social inequalities." 

But this charitable attitude does not long per- 
sist. This "misapplication" is soon identified 
with original Christianity, and then "social de- 
mocracy turns against Christ and the church 
because it sees in them only a means of provid- 
ing a religious foundation for the existing eco- 
nomic order," as Naumann puts it.^ 

Our quotations in the last paragraph have 
come from "Christian" socialists — men v^ho are 
much better Christians than socialists. More 
genuinely socialist characterizations are these: 
"Christianity and capitalism; the two curses of 
our time." "The cross, once the symbol of civi- 
lization, is now the symbol of slavery." ^ Bax 
writes : ^ " The theology they (the socialists) 
detest is so closely entwined with the current 
mode of production that the two must stand or 
fall together." Or, more fully, "The religious 
aspect of capitalistic civilization is dogmatic 

* De Laveleye, "L'avenir religieux des peuples civilises," 25. 
2 Cited in Peabody, /. c, 17. 

^ Cited in Kaufmann, /. c, 3. 

* Bax, /. c, 81, 77. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 133 

Protestantism. The Reformation which began 
among the middle classes has continued, gener- 
ally speaking, to coincide with them. The pre- 
dominantly commercial states of Christendom 
are the predominantly Protestant ones, while 
even in Catholic countries the main strength of 
the Protestant minority lies in the trading 
classes. The religious creed of the capitalist 
bourgeoisie is dogma, minus sacerdotalism. 
The religious creed of the land-owning aristoc- 
racy is sacerdotalism, with a nominal adhesion 
to dogma. The watchword of the one is, an in- 
fallible church; the standard of the other, an in- 
fallible Bible. The Romish or High- Anglican 
squire represents incarnate land, on its religious 
side; the Baptist haberdasher, incarnate capi- 
talism." This is not intended for mere face- 
tiousness, but for serious reasoning — ^which is 
our justification for quoting it at length. " Chris- 
tianity is the religion of private property and of 
the respectable classes," says Liebknecht.^ 
"Christianity as seen in this country," says 
Hyndman, an Englishman,^ "is merely the 
chloroform agency of the confiscating classes. 
Consequently the workmen are daily turning 
more and more against its professors." "In 

^ Cited in Peabody, /. c, 19. 
' Letter in Kaufmann, /. c, 223. 



134 THE CHURCHES AND 

Protestantism," says Bax,* "the supremacy of 
individualism in religion, its antagonism to the 
old social religions, reaches its highest point of 
development. Protestantism is the middle class 
version of Christianity; Puritanism, the insular 
commentary on this version. The working 
classes see plainly enough that Christianity, in 
all its forms, belongs to the world of the past 
and the present, but not to the world of the 
future which signifies their emancipation." 

This opposition to the principles of Chris- 
tianity is carried further into a desire to sup- 
press every manifestation of them, and is ex- 
pressed in terms which savor of blind hatred 
and utter scorn. Benoit Malon, one of the 
leaders of French sociaHsm, writes:^ "To sup- 
press religion which promises an illusory hap- 
piness is to establish the claims of real happiness, 
for to demonstrate the non-existence of these 
illusions tends toward suppressing a state of 
things which requires illusions for maintaining 
its own existence." Says Engels:^ "The first 
word of religion is a lie." Marx is reported * as 
saying: "The idea of God must be destroyed; 
it is the keystone of a perverted civilization. 

^ Bax, I. c, 28, 56, 99. 

^ In "Nouveau parti," Vol. I, p. 34. 

^ Cited in Peabody, /. c, 16. 

* In Pall Mall Magazine, Vol. V, p. 680, note. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 135 

The true root of liberty, of equality, of culture, 
is atheism." "It is useless blinking the fact," 
says Bax,* "that the Christian doctrine is more 
revolting to the highest moral sense of to-day 
than the Saturnalia of the cult of Proserpina 
could have been to the conscience of the early 
Christians." 

" Religion is a staple ingredient of bourgeois 
family life in this country (England). It con- 
stitutes the chief amusement of the women of the 
family. In contemporary British social life the 
church or chapel is the rendezvous or general 
club for both sexes; a marriage bureau ; a fash- 
ionable lounge." ^ A tone like this must be en- 
couraging to those who would identify socialism 
and Christianity. "A child or person intellec- 
tually incapable, either naturally or through ig- 
norance, or both, comes under the influence of 
the Salvation Army or the worst kind of Catholic 
priest, it matters not which, is terrified by threats 
of the wrath of God into ' conversion,' becomes 
the slave of General Booth or the 'Church,' is 
warped morally and mentally for life, and in the 
worst case possibly driven to religious mania." ^ 
This inevitably suggests the possibility of com- 
bining Christian and socialist Sunday-schools. 
Socialism "utterly despises the 'other world' 

^ Ibid. 2 Bax, /. c, 140. ^ Ibid. 114. 



136 THE CHURCHES AND 

with all is stage properties — that is, the present 
objects of religion." ^ The churches' attitude 
toward the world is fundamentally wrong and 
has led inexorably to their failure. Thus Her- 
ron,^ an American: "The collective attitude of 
the Church toward God and his world is pre- 
cisely the attitude of the Pharisees and Saddu- 
cees that wrought the destruction of the Jewish 
church and nation in the day of its visitation." 
"The success of Christianity as a moral force," 
adds Bax,^ "has been solely upon isolated indi- 
viduals. In its effect upon society at large it 
has signally and necessarily failed." 

That the socialists are always unfair to the 
social eflForts of clergymen is notorious. In Ger- 
many the ministers are referred to as the 
"spiritual poHce," the "black dragoons," etc., 
and everything they propose or advocate is sus- 
pected and affirmed to be in the interests of the 
capitalistic class. One of the main reasons for 
the weakness of Stbcker's influence is simply 
the fact that he is a Protestant clergyman. In 
France the feeling is the same now as when, 
during the great Revolution, a thoughtful pro- 
posal of the Abbe Sieyes was defeated merely 
because it emanated from a priest. In England 

* Bax, /. c, 52. ' Herron, "The Christian Society," 62. 

' Bax, /. c, 98. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 137 

and in America the clergy have been the subject 
of constant villification at the hands of sociahsts 
until recently. Now, in view of the possibility of 
enlisting some of the clergy in active propaganda 
work, the official tone of socialism is somewhat 
moderating. 

It is being said, for example, that the past 
utterances of the revolutionary party do not im- 
ply any disrespect for Christianity, but only for 
"churchianity." The workingmen, it is said, 
have great reverence for Christ, even though 
sometimes combined with disrespect for the 
churches. "One thing alone is left them — re- 
spect and reverence for Jesus Christ." John 
Spargo, perhaps the leading American socialist, 
gave utterance to this new attitude at the " Sag- 
amore Conference" in 1908. The opposition of 
socialists, he said, is not to Christianity, but to 
the churches' infidelity to the teachings of Christ. 
"The churches now are swinging back to relig- 
ion and away from theology. They are com- 
ing to attach far more importance to man's 
deeds than to his beliefs." But it is extremely 
difficult for a socialist to maintain this concil- 
iatory strain very long. Mr. Spargo continued: 
"Yet it is still true that, among the prominent 
'Christians' in every city, will be found many 
of the worst exploiters of labor, owners of man- 



138 THE CHURCHES AND 

killing tenements, corrupters of legislatures, and 
leaders of political machines that traffic in votes 
and draw tributes from gambling hells and 
brothels." 

Jesus, say these harmonizers, would have been 
a socialist if he were living to-day/ And herein 
lies a key to an understanding of this situation, 
in so far as the attempt at "harmony" is sin- 
cere. The socialists have a reverence for the 
Christ who would have been a sociaHst if living 
to-day; but that is not the Christ of history, and 
most socialists know it, and are consequently 
utterly devoid of the respect with which they are 
fondly credited by enthusiastic evangelists and 
unobservant men of the study. That there are 
individual socialists who are religious is, of 
course, indisputable; but the attitude of the 
movement as a whole is unquestionably anti- 
religious. Robert Hunter said recently : - " There 
is a church in this country which is going more 
and more to attack socialism along this line (the 
religious), and I do not want to have to discuss 
it." The reason for this diffidence is not far to 
seek. 

The whole sociaHst attitude is admirably 
summed up in these words quoted by Kauf- 

» Cited in Peabody, /. c, 65. 

'Chicago Daily Socialist^ May 16, 1908. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 139 

mann * from an anonymous pamphlet: "I can- 
not agree with you in the view you take that 
Christianity and socialism are the same thing. 
Christianity and sociaHsm are opposed to each 
other as fire and water. The so-called good 
kernel in Christianity, which you, not I, dis- 
cover in it, is not Christian, but merely human, 
and the peculiarity of Christianity, the bulk of 
its dogmas and doctrines, is inimical to hu- 
manity." 

^ Kaufmann, /. c, i6o. 



CHAPTER II 

"CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM" 

A S for the attitude of the churches toward so- 
^ ^ ciaHsm, its unfriendHness, proclaimed from 
the housetops by the out-and-out socialists, is 
admitted even by the "Christian socialists/' 
In France and in Belgium the Catholic social 
movement is the bitter enemy of socialism. 
"The great contest of the end of the centur}%" 
said the secretary of a Belgian CathoHc workers' 
congress, "will be between Catholicism and so- 
cialism." Pope Leo XIII, in his famous Encyc- 
lical, has committed the Catholic Church 
against it. In England the High-Anglicans 
have had little to do with socialism, and the free 
churches even less. In America few churches 
have as yet awakened to the fact of its existence. 
Prominent ministers can be found in every city, 
S.T.B.'s and D.D.'s, who have not the faint- 
est idea what socialism really is. "In every 
countr}%" according to Mr. Campbell,^ "it is 
the same story: the churches are one thing, the 

* Campbell, /. c, 19. 

140 



THE WAGE EARNERS 141 

socialist movement is another; despite individ- 
ual instances of clerical socialism, official Chris- 
tianity is not only quite distinct from socialism; 
the two are antagonistic." 

The "individual instances" to which Mr. 
Campbell refers are probably those like Maurice 
and Kingsley, Von Ketteler, Huber, and the 
rest, who originated the "Christian socialist" 
movement. For our purposes it is not neces- 
sary to go into the history of this interesting de- 
velopment; ^ but one aspect of it is of great sig- 
nificance to us: the hostility between it and 
real socialism. In Germany and in France 
"Christian socialism" was met by the fanatical 
hatred of the materialistic socialists. It works 
against the undisguised contempt of the Social 
Democracy and the Socialist Party. Its incep- 
tion was accompanied by the rise of a radical 
development of anarchical socialism. In Eng- 
land and America also it has been opposed by 
the genuine socialists. 

There are two reasons for this. In the first 
place, "Christian socialism" is not socialism at 
all, but merely a system of voluntary coopera- 
tion, with or without clerical supervision. The 

^The best work on this subject is still Kaufmann, "Christian 
Socialism." See also Nitti, "Catholic Socialism"; Ely, "French 
and German Socialism," 245; Peabody, /. c, 21; Arthur V. 
Woodworth, " Christian Socialism in England." 



142 THE CHURCHES AND 

Catholic "Christian socialists" in Germany, 
France and Belgium propose to improve in- 
dustrial conditions by placing them under the 
direct management of the church. Protestant 
"Christian socialism" proposes merely the 
more consistent application of Christian ethics 
to the conduct of business. In neither case is 
there a very definite economic program. There 
are wide varieties of opinion among "Christian 
socialists" as to what they really expect to do, 
and their utterances on the subject are extremely 
vague. The only real economist they have ever 
claimed is Adolph Wagner, of the University of 
Berlin; and his affiliation with them is ex- 
tremely tenuous. 

The nearest approach to an economic princi- 
ple behind the English school of Maurice and 
Kingsley is the conviction of the unchristian 
character of the prevailing economic system. 
It deplores the evil results of competition, and 
would improve the present system by legal re- 
striction and regulation, or by the introduction 
of wider cooperation, but would not abolish it. 
The movement in England did, in fact, finally 
go off into cooperation of the Rochdale kind.^ 
Kaufmann says that in Germany the "Chris- 
tian Social Party" would better have been 

* Vansittart Neale, in Ely, "French and German Socialism," 252. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 143 

called "The Defenders of Society on Church 
and State Principles/' According to Mehring, 
the historian of the German Social Democracy, 
Christian socialism was bound to fail because it 
aimed, not at a normal evolution in the modern 
capitalistic process, but rather at a reversion 
to a feudal-patriarchal system. 

All this, of course, has nothing to do with "or- 
thodox" socialism. The cardinal tenets of sci- 
entific socialism are these: ^ public ownership 
and control of the means of production, and 
common control of distribution, submission to 
both of which must be compulsory. Here is a 
very definite and tangible program, backed up 
by an extremely ingenious economic analysis 
which has been worked out by some of the keen- 
est thinkers the world has produced.^ "The 
system of doctrines worked out by Marx," said 
a professor at the University of Chicago,^ "is 
characterized by a certain boldness of concep- 
tion and a great logical consistency." It is 

» The chief source is, of course, Karl Marx, " Capital." A good 
study based on this is J. E. Le Rossignol, "Orthodox Socialism." 
The best presentation, for Americans, from a socialist, is John 
Spargo, "Socialism"; from an "orthodox" economist, R. T. Ely, 
"Socialism and Social Reform." 

'Ely, "F. and G. Socialism," chapters on Rodbertus, Marx, 
Lassalle. 

3 Veblen, "The Socialist Economics of Karl Marx, "Quar. Jour. 
Ec, Vol. XX, p. 575. Mr Veblen is now (1909) at Leland Stan- 
ford University. 



144 THE CHURCHES 

quite a different thing, indeed, from the tenta- 
tiveness and vagueness of "Christian sociaHsm." 
The second, and fundamental, reason for the 
hostihty between Christian and orthodox social- 
ism is simply the fact that the former, in its best 
estate, is religious and the latter is not. Chris- 
tian "socialism" insists on the infusion of a new 
spiritual influence; it relies on self-effacement 
and self-denial rather than on self-assertion and 
self-seeking. It insists, especially on the Conti- 
nent, in maintaining a connection between in- 
dustry and the church. And the wiser "Chris- 
tian socialists," like Perin,^ know that there can 
be no lasting union of the materialistic economic 
program of Marx and his followers with the 
spiritual influence of Jesus. "Those doctrines 
which pretend to free mankind from the service 
of God (du joug divin) lead it to slavery and 
misery." ^ 

^Charles H. X. Perin, "Doctrines economiques depuis un 
siecle," especially chapter xii. Cf. also Perin, "Les lois de la 
societe chretienne, I, 458, sqq. 

* Perin, "Doctrines economiques," 208. 



CHAPTER III 

INHERENT INCOMPATIBILITIES 

TX rE find in the failure of "Christian social- 
^ ^ ism" a hint as to the source of the mutual 
antagonism between the churches and the 
socialists. There is a fundamental difference 
between Christianity as taught by Christ and 
orthodox socialism. We will now proceed to a 
study of this difference. 

I. Early Christianity and Socialism 

In the first place, was Jesus a socialist? 
Renan said that "in one view Jesus was an an- 
archist." * Later he adds, Jesus's conception 
of the world was " socialist with a Galilean col- 
oring." Unless it was the Galilean coloring 
which converted his anarchism into socialism, 
both these statements cannot possibly be true. 

To find any economics at all, to say nothing 
of socialist economics, in the teaching of Jesus, 
we should have to revise radically the current 
definition of the term. Naumann says : ^ " Je- 

» Cited in Peabody, /. c, 58. " Ibid.^ 62. 

145 



146 THE CHURCHES AND 

sus was, on moral grounds, a radical enemy of 
capital." If the accuracy of this view were 
granted — which it cannot be by any sound exe- 
gesis^ — ^that fact alone would not prove him a 
socialist in the scientific sense, although it would 
accord well with the popular socialist concep- 
tion of sociaUsm. Nor is Luke necessarily 
"frankly socialistic" ^ in his way of presenting 
Jesus's words: "Blessed are ye that hunger 
now, for ye shall be filled; Blessed are ye poor, 
for yours is the Kingdom of God." Socialism 
is not enmity to the rich and sympathy for the 
poor; it is a scheme of production and distri- 
bution. Jesus was not a socialist; and the state- 
ment of Bax, that the "introspective and sub- 
jective teaching of Jesus and of Christianity is 
anti-socialistic" ^ is far nearer the truth than 
the rash claims so often put forth by ardent 
propagandists and zealous harmonizers. As 
Professor Peabody puts it: * "the supreme con- 
cern of Jesus was not the reorganization of 
human society, but the disclosure to the human 
soul of its relation to God. Instead of regener- 
ation by organization, Jesus offers regeneration 
by inspiration." 

It is said, however, that the churches should 

* Ante, p. 66. * Campbell, /, c, 77. 

» Bax, /. c, 96. * Peabody, /. c, 77, 9a 



THE WAGE EARNERS 147 

favor the tendency to communism, because 
communism was the early Christian policy/ It 
is the consensus of opinion, however, of con- 
servatives and radicals alike, that communism 
has no justification in the Scriptures; ^ that 
community of life but not of goods was the pre- 
cept and practice in the early church. It is 
certain that there was none of the modern eco- 
nomic theory behind its communism, as even 
Mr. Campbell admits.^ 

Communism under religious auspices has 
been tried in every century, including the nine- 
teenth, and has failed utterly as a solution of 
the social question.* And the real socialists 
are the first to insist that religious communism 
has nothing in common with their economic pro- 
posals; ^ so that the theory and practice of the 
churches on this point have nothing to do with 
our present subject. 

* Rauschenbusch, /. c, 388. 

' Peabody, /. c, 23, and Bibliography, 26, note. 

' Campbell, /. c, 113, 176; Crapsey, /. c, 129. 

*For sympathetic study, see WiUiam A. Hinds, "American 
Communities"; John H. Noyes, "History of American Social- 
isms"; Charles NordhojQF, "Communistic Societies of the United 
States." 

^ Karl Kautsky, "Die Vorlaiifer des Neueren Sozialismus"; 
Karl Hugo, Anhang zu "Die Vorlaiifer, etc." 



148 THE CHURCHES AND 



2. Aims 

"The aims of socialism," says Mr. Camp- 
bell,^ "are Christian because they insist on the 
desirability of getting together instead of 
keeping apart, on mutual helpfulness instead of 
mutual hindrance." This is excellent Chris- 
tianity, but very poor socialism. Christianity 
has always opposed separative forces, and that 
is just one of the reasons why socialism cannot 
tolerate it. "The first lesson in the catechism 
of industrial revolution is a lesson in class ha- 
tred." ^ "The twin passions of love and hate 
supply the motive power" ^ in the socialist re- 
ligion. An essential feature of the socialist phi- 
losophy of history is the inevitable antagonism 
between the capitalistic and the laboring classes, 
a gulf which nothing can bridge, and which can 
be closed only by a cataclysmic revolution. 
"Along with the constantly diminishing num- 
ber of the magnates of capital," writes the high- 
priest Marx, "who usurp and monopolize all 
advantages of this process of transformation, 
grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, 
degradation, exploitation; but with this, too, 

» Campbell, /. c, 151. = Peabody, /. c, 306. 

^ Le Rossignol, " Orthodox Socialism," 6. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 149 

grows the revolt of the working class, a class 
always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, 
united, organized by the very mechanism of the 
process of capitalist production itself. The 
monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the 
mode of production, which has sprung up and 
flourished along with and under it. Central- 
ization of the means of production and social- 
ization of labor at last reach a point where they 
become incompatible with their capitalist in- 
tegument. This integument is burst asunder. 
The knell of capitalist private property sounds. 
The expropriators are expropriated." ^ 

Occasionally a radical socialist, representing 
but a small minority of the party, but in per- 
fectly good standing with it, will give voice to a 
faith in physical force which verges on terroris- 
tic anarchism. Thus Mr. Hyndman writes:^ 
"Chemistry has placed at the disposal of the 
desperate and needy cheap and powerful explo- 
sives, the full effects of which are as yet unknown. 
Every day adds new discoveries in this field; 
the dynamite of ideas is accompanied in the 
background by the dynamite of physical force. 
These modern explosives may easily prove to 

» Marx, "Capital," 487. 

'Henry M. Hyndman, "The Historical Basis of Socialism in 
England," 443. 



150 THE CHURCHES AND 

capitalism what gunpowder was to feudalism." 
This is "getting together'* with a vengeance! 

The aim of Christianity is essentially different 
from that of socialism. The former is ideaHstic; 
the latter materialistic. " Seek ye first his king- 
dom and his righteousness," the cardinal prin- 
ciple of Christianity, is contemptuously referred 
to by Bax ^ as "the dreamy introspection of a 
Syrian mystic." The socialist aims at material- 
istic satisfaction, the Christian at spiritual per- 
fection. It is not true, as so often asserted by 
socialists, that Christianity is exclusively a re- 
ligion of individual salvation and of the other 
world. It is a religion intended for us who 
happen to live in this world, and it recognizes 
that a "salvation by character" must neces- 
sarily be, from one point of view, social. But 
the essential point is that Christianity proposes 
a salvation, an ideal end, and not a mere redis- 
tribution of goods or of opportunity for com- 
mercial or industrial advancement. Socialism 
may ultimately become a question of the equi- 
table distribution of ideal goods, the means of 
higher culture as the results of a better civiliza- 
tion; but that is only an incident, a remote hope. 

The ends immediately proposed by socialism 
are very far indeed from being idealistic: at 

» Bax, /. c, 175. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 151 

present it is admittedly a "stomach question." 
The immediate aim of socialism is economic; 
that of religion is spiritual. 

3. Methods 

There is also a fundamental difference of 
method. Socialism proposes an external revo- 
lution in the form of society and the mechanism 
of industry; Christianity proposes an internal 
reformation and the reform of society by or- 
ganic evolution. In the Christian view the 
essential thing for a good government is the 
worth of the individuals administering it; so- 
cialism says that the essential thing for the indi- 
vidual is the nature of his government. Mr. 
Campbell says: ^ "Jesus denied that there 
could be such a thing as an individualist right- 
eousness, a righteousness entirely between man 
and God, and not between man and man." 
This is true so far as it goes, but it is only half 
true, and is not squarely to the point. "The 
social teaching of Jesus is this: that the social 
order is not a product of mechanism but of per- 
sonality, and that personality fulfils itself only 
in the social order." ^ This is the doctrine 
which the thorough-going socialist attacks. 
Bax says that the Christian doctrine that all 

* Campbell, /. c, 123. ' Peabody, /. c, 102. 



152 THE CHURCHES AND 

change must come from the individual, that re- 
form must come from within, is "in striking de- 
fiance of the teaching of history." * The answer 
to this comes from history and common sense. 
Society and institutions are made up of indi- 
viduals; and although it is unquestionable that 
the form of society reacts upon the character of 
individuals, no change ever has or ever can 
come to the former except as the result of 
changes in the latter. 

The essence of "Christian socialism" is 
summed up in the proposition of Baader ^ that, 
if you want to abolish misery among the poor, 
you must first destroy sin in yourself and then 
in others. Social wrongs are due ultimately to 
sin — to selfishness and improvidence. Professor 
Ross even makes the social effect of conduct the 
only test of its "sinfulness." But the real so- 
cialist can admit none of this. The evils of 
society are the product of blind economic forces. 
His philosophy is entirely different from that of 
the Christian. The socialist is a fatalist to 
whom history is but the mechanical unfolding 
of a cosmic process in which human will, hu- 
man consciousness, human ideals, are but the 

* Bax, /. c, 130. 

"Baader, "Ueber die Zeitschrift Avenir und Ihre Principien," 
Werke, VI, 31. (L' Avenir was the organ of Lamennais, the great 
French "Christian socialist.") 



THE WAGE EARNERS 153 

resultants of economic and social forces, and in 
which consequently there can be no such thing 
as sin, in any real sense. There can be no sin 
in the absence of freedom of the will; and the 
will which is merely the creature of circum- 
stances is not free. "In the materialistic 
(Marxian) conception," says Veblen,* "man's 
spiritual life — ^whatever man thinks — is a reflex 
of what he is in the material respect." And 
Marx himself says: ^ "The ideal is nothing else 
than the material world reflected by the human 
mind, and translated into forms of thought." 
Man's aspirations, his morality, his religion, 
are all the outcome of his environment — ^which 
is, therefore, his master. But the idealist knows 
that man can and should be the master of his 
environment, "the captain of his fate." " Facts" 
are not as stubborn as they seem. "Ideas can 
be quite as stubborn as any particular facts, 
can outlast them, and, in the end, abolish 
them." ^ One-sided emphasis on either is a 
mistake; but it is better to err on the spiritual- 
istic than on the materialistic side. 

The world of Jesus is one in which " inequal- 
ity is an essential aspect of human life." * As 

» Veblen, Quar. Jour. Ec, Vol. XX, p. 580. 

*Marx, "Capital," xvii. 

» Josiah Royce, "The World and the Individual," I, 287. 

i Peabody, /. c, 290, 



154 THE CHURCHES AND 

we have already seen, spiritual and material in- 
equality are the very foundations of the churches' 
missionary, charitable, and social work. In 
a wise view, the churches take equality for an 
ideal; but to ignore the present state of ine- 
quality would be not only foolish but cruel. 
Socialism also aims at an equality of some kind, 
although its precise nature would be ver}' diffi- 
cult to disentangle from the mass of conflicting 
proposals on the subject. There is, however, 
an essential difference between it and the kind 
of equality Christianity holds in view, and con- 
sequently a difference in the methods by which 
they are to be attained. The socialist aims at an 
average level; the Christian tries to raise all to 
the top. The socialist would elevate the 
"masses," and, if necessar}-, to that end would 
depress the "classes"; Christianity would raise 
all together to ideals higher than the present 
highest actuality. 

It must be remembered that Christianity as 
such has nothing to do with details of social 
method. Jesus did not propose a particular 
economic scheme, but a way of life which should 
be lived under any system. He did, to be sure, 
propose a system of moral principles which 
might be applied as a test to any scheme, social, 
economic, or religious; and any scheme which 



THE WAGE EARNERS 155 

meets the requirements of this test might, in a 
sense, be called Christian. As we shall see, 
socialism does not and cannot meet these re- 
quirements. It makes no pretense of doing so. 
The social democracy is an entirely new con- 
ception of life. "Socialism," says Bax,^ "is 
essentially neither religious nor irreligious, in- 
asmuch as it reaffirms the unity of human 
life." Christianity affirms this unity also, but 
Christianity is essentially religious. Christian- 
ity insists that the spirit in the machinery of 
production and distribution shall be the spirit 
of brotherhood; but it has nothing to say about 
the construction of the machinery. It says: 
get the power, and you can make almost any 
kind of a machine work. Socialism, on the 
other hand, is concerned mainly with a special 
design of machine. It says: make your ma- 
chine right, and the power will take care of it- 
self. But physics, as well as religion, is against 
the socialist. 

4. Moral Values 

There are also fundamental differences be- 
tween the ethics of Christianity and of social- 
ism. The Christian type of social union is "a 
true brotherhood founded on devotion and self- 

» Bax, /. c, 48, 53- 



156 THE CHURCHES AND 

sacrifice." ^ It is only on such a basis as this 
that civilized society, with its ever-growing so- 
ciality and interdependence, can exist at all. 
Now self-denial is essentially a religious quality. 
It must find its basis, if anywhere, in an ideal, 
superhuman ^ system, such a system as the 
socialist philosophy must deny. One of the in- 
herent self-contradictions in socialism, which 
could not but be fatal to its workability, is its 
dependence (as a system of production) upon 
an unselfish idealistic devotion to secure purely 
selfish and materialistic ends. It demands per- 
fect cooperation from consummate egoists. It 
would be absurd and unjust to deny that there 
are many thoughtful enthusiasts now working 
for socialism who are not only not in it for per- 
sonal gain, but, in fact, suffer loss, and even 
martyrdom, in behalf of their cause. But, on 
the other hand, any one who has ever attended 
a socialist meeting must have been struck with 
the crass selfishness of the majority of the so- 
cialists present, and their bitter hatred of capital, 
apparently based mainly on their lack of it. 

When the American Federation of Labor 
passed resolutions ^ endorsing the Presbyterian 



* Kaufmann, /. c, 35. 

' Benjamin Kidd, " Social Evolution," for elaboration of this idea. 

^ Stelzle, 30 "Ann. Am. Ac." 460. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 157 

Department of Church and Labor, it was on the 
ground of its "insuring a better understanding 
on the part of the church and the clergy of the 
aims and objects of the labor union movement 
in America." They saw a chance to get some- 
thing, for which it never occurred to them that 
they owed anything in return. The Federation 
of Labor is not a socialist body, nor does it go 
as far as the socialists in its self-assertiveness. 
Social revolution insists on rights, and would 
abolish duties. As claimed by one of its advo- 
cates, Oscar Wilde: ^ "The chief advantage 
that would result from the establishment of 
socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that social- 
ism would relieve us from that sordid necessity 
of living for others which, in the present condi- 
tion of things, presses so hardly upon almost 
everybody." Perin ^ describes socialism as "a 
utilitarian arrogance which brings into play 
every kind of selfishness and makes liberty as 
maleficent as despotism." 

Socialism, in fact, proposes a new transvalua- 
tion of all moral values. "All the virtues in the 
Christian armory," says Mr. Campbell,^ "are 
more likely to prove a hindrance than a help to 

> Wilde, "The Soul of Man under Socialism," Fortnightly Rev., 
Vol. LV, p. 292. 

* Perin, "Doctrines economiques," 207. 
3 Campbell, /. c, 208. 



158 THE CHURCHES AND 

getting the wage earner into the ranks of the 
employers"; and as sociaHsm aims to make 
every one the employer of every one else, the 
sooner such virtues are cast aside as obsolete the 
better. Honesty loses its meaning in the hands 
of even a "Christian socialist": for what must 
one think of Mr. Campbell's ingenious scheme 
of buying out all private businesses in order to 
avoid the appearance of confiscation, and then 
depriving the money paid for them of all ex- 
change value ? * In the socialist philosophy, 
according to Guyot,^ theft becomes a positive 
virtue. Of course, this is perfectly logical in 
a system which denies the right of private prop- 
erty, though it may permit it as a favor. Per- 
haps it is right to "expropriate the expropria- 
tors"; but if the first expropriation was wrong, 
it is difficult to see how the proposed one can be 
any better. 

Bax says of Christianity:^ "in its praise of 
industry and thrift it is decidedly anti-social- 
istic." Industry and thrift tend toward the 
amelioration of one's lot under the present sys- 
tem, and thus to make one less discontented 
with this system; therefore, by socialist logic, 

* Ihid., 192, 219. 

*Guyot, "La coni6die socialiste," 72 {V appropriation so- 
ciale). 
' Bax, /. c, 94. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 159 

" for a town or country laborer to practise thrift 
would be absolutely immoral." * Similarly 
with charity. "Charity is worse than useless; 
systematically practised it is a demoralizing in- 
fluence." ^ Rescue work is also futile. The 
humanitarian work of the churches, since it 
attacks symptoms and not causes, is an entire 
waste of energy. Altruism only aggravates 
social distress.^ The only possible ground for 
these conclusions must be some such theory as 
that, if you cannot cure a disease outright, it is 
an injury to attempt to alleviate the suffering. 

Patience is, of course, a bourgeois virtue in- 
vented to keep the proletariat from getting in a 
hurry to walk into their inheritance. "So long 
as Christianity ruled the minds of men the idea 
of revolution was rejected as a sinful revolt 
against divinely constituted authority," accord- 
ing to Kautsky. A religion of suffering, humil- 
ity, and resignation is opposed to class pride and 
class antagonism, and consequently can find no 
sympathizers among those to whom humility 
and resignation are vices, and suffering a crime 
for which the rich must be made to pay the 
penalty. 

"The morose priggishness involved in the 

* Wilde, /. c.y 29. 2 Campbell, I. c, 165, 268, 166. 

' WUde, /. c. 



i6o THE CHURCHES 

reverential attitude of mind which is de rigueur 
with Protestantism" ^ also comes in for a share 
of attention. "The notion of reverence," says 
Bax, "like that of personal religion, is the crea- 
tion of that middle class order which took its 
first rise in the sixteenth, and has culminated in 
the world of the nineteenth century." 

In the opinion of many socialists, the institu- 
tion of the family is incompatible with indus- 
trial democracy, so it would have to go also. 
The family took its origin together with private 
property and is bound up with that institution. 
Woman cannot enjoy that economic freedom 
which is every one's birthright in the socialist 
state so long as she is hampered by marriage. 
Personal purity is a strictly individualistic mat- 
ter, and therefore non-moral.^ 

These conceptions are not merely the vagaries 
of revolutionary minds. They are logical de- 
ductions from a definite philosophy of history 
and of life. They are the inevitable accompani- 
ments of an ethic of egoism, just as the princi- 
ples of Christianity are the natural outcome of 
an ethic of idealism. 

»Bax, /. c, 177, 31. 

' August Bebel, "Woman"; William Moms, "News from No- 
where"; Bax, "Outspoken Essays," etc.; H. G. Walls, "Socialism 
and the Family." 



CHAPTER IV 

ORIGIN AND CORRECTION OF THE ERROR 

TITTIY is it that in view of all these consider- 
ations it is still possible for thoughtful 
men to make the mistake of supposing that the 
teaching of Jesus is not incompatible with so- 
cialism ? It is probably because, while there is 
no point of contact between Christianity and 
socialism on religion, it is felt there may be in 
matters of social interest. Socialism exempli- 
fies, in its best advocates, a burning aspiration 
for social justice, for the immediate amehoration 
of the lot of suffering humanity. "Socialism 
appeals to justice, and this moral basis of its de- 
mands is the common platform upon which 
Christian and un-Christian socialism meet." * 

But there is recently manifest a tendency to 
push this community of interest further than the 
facts warrant. Justice is admitted to be a vir- 
tue by both Christianity and socialism; so it is 
also by anarchism, and Buddhism, and Moham- 
medanism; but that is hardly sufficient ground 
for the assertion that they, therefore, stand on 

* Kaufmann, /. c, 201. 

i6i 



i62 THE CHURCHES AND 

a common platform. The looseness of thought 
and of statement which has characterized the 
discussion of this subject, with a few honorable 
exceptions, reaches its climax in this eloquent 
passage of Mr. Campbell's :* "Anything that 
tends toward universal brotherhood is Chris- 
tian; anything that mak^ for wider Hfe for all 
instead of for the few only is Christian; any- 
thing that encourages the highest self-expression 
of the individual in the service of the common 
good is Christian; anything that tends toward 
the destruction of selfishness and the demolition 
of all barriers of privilege between nation and 
nation or man and man is Christian." True; 
but Mr. Campbell means to identify these aspi- 
rations, which are common to all lovers of 
mankind, to all thoughtful students of society 
and of Hfe, exclusively with sociaHsm; and then 
he concludes that sociaHsm is identical with 
Christianity! "Harmonization" has performed 
some wonderful feats in its day; but this seems 
to be worthy of the crown. 

It is a very simple trick, this latest move of 
socialism. It consists in taking whatever good 
socialism has derived from Christianity and 
holding it up to the latter as a model and a test. 
The socialists absorbed their notions of justice 

* Campbell, /. c, 148. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 163 

from the Christian atmosphere in which they 
were nurtured; and then Christianity is interro- 
gated, with an injured air, as to why it does not 
admit its socialism, inasmuch as it teaches the 
same virtue, justice. This process is hand- 
somely illustrated in The Christian Socialist^ a 
magazine published in Chicago. It says: ^ "If 
you don't want socialism, quit professing to 
believe in the 'Golden Rule' as a rule of life. 
If you don't want socialism, do not follow 
Christ, who said, *Love one another as I have 
loved you.' If you don't want socialism, quit 
repeating the Beatitudes, etc." In other words, 
the test of real Christianity is its conformity 
with socialism, because sociaHsm has adopted, 
as catch-words, some of the mottoes (but none 
of the spirit) of the religion of Jesus. 

Another phase of the manoeuvre is admirably 
exhibited in the quotation just given from Mr. 
Campbell. Socialism appropriates all the hopes 
and ideals of all the best thinkers which it can 
by any possibility fit into, or hang on to, its 
system; and then reissues them labelled "So- 
cialistic." I suppose that in one sense anything 
which has to do with social Hfe is "socialistic." 
But as was shown above, "SociaHsm" is the 
name for a specific programme of economic and 

* The Christian Socialist^ March 19, 1908. 



i64 THE CHURCHES AND 

social action, with definite and easily recogniz- 
able features/ The substantive "socialism" 
and the adjective "socialist" should be re- 
stricted to this definite system. The adjective 
"socialistic" could then be used, although still 
too easily misunderstood, to indicate any eco- 
nomic or social measure, whether "socialist" or 
not. It would be well if we had another noun, 
"sociaHstik," formed on German analogies; ^ 
to cover all social measures outside of " social- 
ism." State regulation of corporations would 
then be "socialistic," but very far indeed from 
"sociahst." In fact, in its tendency to foster 
and protect, by purifying, private enterprise, it 
would be the direct antithesis of "socialism," 
which would abolish private enterprise entirely. 
Of course the church should recognize the 
good in socialism, as it should also in its polar 
opposite anarchism, and in anything else that 
has any good in it. And although it is not true 
that "the church has much to learn from social- 
ism," ^ it can learn much from the origin and 
history of the movement. As in Germany, the 
Social Democracy has been called the only 
champion of the new needs of a new era for the 



* Ante, p. 104. 

^ Cf. "mysticismus" and "mystik." 

■ Mathews, "The Church and the Changing Order," 174. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 165 

workingmen/ so everywhere the churches' fail- 
ure to champion these new needs is largely respon- 
sible for the infidelity of the masses of the 
laboring people. As Professor Ely says: ^ "The 
clergy are partly to blame for the irreligious 
attitude of many modern sociaHsts"; and there 
is no doubt in my mind that the growth of so- 
cialism and the concurrent decline of the 
churches are correlated about this centre. 

For it is true that there are grave moral dan- 
gers inherent in a competitive system to which 
the church has not in the past paid sufficient 
attention. The demands of business often per- 
mit, not to say encourage, practices which are 
in direct violation of ethics. In many respects 
the ethics of commercialism are contrary to the 
ethics of the church. This of course does not 
mean that the present system must be abolished; 
but it does mean that the divergence between 
the ethics which are most successful in it, and the 
ethics of Christianity, must be overcome, and that 
the church is the natural agency through which 
the reform should be wrought. It is true that some 
of the virtues of business life — ^truth, honor, fi- 
delity, loyalty — are also Christian virtues; ^ but 

^ Gohre, "Three Months in a Workshop," iii. 
2 Ely, "French and German Socialism," 23. 
' Peabody, /. c, 319. 



i66 THE CHURCHES AND 

they are not exclusively Christian virtues, and 
the people see no reason for crediting the churches 
with such prevalence as they have attained. 
It is also true — and this is a fact apt to be over- 
looked by all but the socialists — ^that these are 
the virtues of the employee, not necessarily of 
the employer, in modern industry. The most 
conspicuous great fortunes of our day v^ere, in 
general, made precisely through the utter neg- 
lect of these virtues — and that, often, by des- 
perately conscientious "Christians." This is 
matter of common knowledge; and it is about 
time for the churches' voice to be heard in un- 
mistakable protest against such a condition. 

Nor should the churches be surprised that in 
this day of growing wealth and industry the 
laborers are demanding a larger share of the 
enjoyments of life. This is not entirely a de- 
mand for mere materialistic satisfaction. Com- 
mon observation shows that wealth stands for 
more abundant life while poverty usually 
means a narrow Hfe. "The greater our com- 
munal command of the potentialities of the ma- 
terial world in which we live, the greater the ex- 
tent of our spiritual possibilities." * It is not 
only easy to be virtuous on ten thousand a year: 
it is easier to stimulate and satisfy the craving 

* Campbell, /. c, 234. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 167 

for mental, moral and spiritual improvement, 
if one is inclined that way; and many a man 
who yearns and works for a better material 
order does so, not for "pudding and praise," 
but for the sake of the ideal benefits he expects 
to derive from it. So far as this is a demand of 
socialism, it should be recognized as a just de- 
mand; and as a just demand it must be included 
within the principles of Christianity. 

Here one must, however, be on his guard 
about the use of this word "justice." The so- 
cialist demands "justice in distribution," and 
the Christian is inclined at once to say, "Well, 
of course, we, too, want justice in distribution, 
so we must be to that extent socialists." But the 
socialist proposes a number of definite schemes 
of distribution, e. g., "from each according to his 
ability, to each according to his need"; more 
specifically he insists that the share of labor in 
the total product of industry is the whole of the 
product, inasmuch as labor made it. But a care- 
ful analysis will show that the first proposal is 
not only utterly impracticable, but would not be 
just, by any customary standard, if it were at- 
tainable; while the second overlooks the fact 
that land and brains and self-denial (saving) are 
also factors in the production of the world's 
goods, and are themselves entitled to share in 



1 68 THE CHURCHES 

the product. This whole question of justice as 
applied to distribution is a difficult one which 
still awaits treatment at the hands of one who 
is at once an economist and an ethicist. In the 
meantime it behooves us not to dogmatize on 
the subject. 



PART IV 
WHAT TO DO 



I 



THE TASK 

It may be that the combination of conserva- 
tism and progress which is, or should be, found 
in the churches may yet save society both from 
socialism and from industrial and social an- 
archy. The danger is only that the forces of 
progress in the churches may be overcome by the 
forces of retrogression in the future as they have 
been so often in the past; and that a democratic 
despotism without the churches may be found 
preferable to a plutocratic or oligarchic tyranny 
with them. 

The spirit of mutual helpfulness and broth- 
erhood which has been read into socialism is 
the spirit which must find a manifestation in 
some form of society sooner or later. It is be- 
cause the spirit of brotherhood is an essentially 
idealistic and religious spirit, while the genius 
of socialism is materialistic and irreligious, that 
we are unable to find any common ground be- 
tween it and Christianity, and, in fact, find them 
utterly opposed to each other. But it still re- 
mains for this religious spirit to be fostered and 
171 



172 THE CHURCHES 

applied to some economic system, the present 
one or another, and by some agency, the church 
or another. When the present churches aie 
seen going about this business, the working- 
men's confidence in them may be restored — but 
not before. How the churches can show that 
they are doing this will now be considered. 



CHAPTER I 

THE NATURE OF THE OPPORTUNITY 

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT, with charac- 
teristic force and acumen, has observed: 
"The shifting of the churches from the plain 
people to the rich in the cities must be looked 
upon with discomfort and alarm/' ^ Mr. 
Charles Booth views the phenomenon with 
more than discomfort and alarm: in fact, with 
positive and complete despair. The alienation 
of the masses is so complete, their indifference 
to the church is so dense, that the task of win- 
ning them back appears very heavy indeed. 
The hopelessness of it becomes final once the 
churches are satisfied with the present situation. 
They have in the past encountered difficulties 
almost equally staggering, but, by perseverance 
and enthusiasm, they have succeeded in over- 
coming them. Their chief danger now seems to 
lie in a certain perceptible wilful ignorance and 
indifference. 

* Hodges and Reichert, " The Administration of an Institu- 
tional Church," ix. 

173 



174 THE CHURCHES AND 

In view of the blind optimism of some of the 
"servants of religion," it is refreshing (or dis- 
couraging) to read this clear and sane expression 
of an "outsider":^ "Even the philosophic 
free-thinker cannot look upon that vast change 
in rehgious ideas that is now sweeping over the 
civilized world without feeling that this tremen- 
dous fact may have most momentous relations, 
which only the future can develop. For what 
is going on is not a change in the form of re- 
ligion, but the negation and destruction of the 
ideas from which religion springs. Christianity 
is not simply clearing itself of superstitions, but 
in the popular mind it is dying at the root, as 
the old paganisms were dying when Christianity 
entered the world. And nothing arises to take 
its place. The fundamental ideas of an intelli- 
gent Creator and of a future life are in the gen- 
eral mind rapidly weakening." 

But there are still seven thousand left who 
have not bowed the knee to Baal; who are cer- 
tain that religion is the salvation not only of the 
individual but of society; and that as religion 
cannot, apparently, long persist except as ex- 
pressed in some form of organization, the 
church, in some form or other, must be a per- 
manent feature of civilization, if civilization it- 

^ George, "Progress and Poverty," 539. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 175 

self is to live and attain to ever greater heights. 
The present situation, then, instead of being 
looked upon as a cause of despair, is rather to 
be considered a challenge and an opportunity. 
As Dr. Gordon said : ^ " We are confronted by 
our greatest opportunity. In the stern days 
that are before us, in the terrible epoch of the 
trial of strength between capital and labor, 
there is an immeasurable opportunity for the 
church that appeals to man as man, that is no 
respecter of persons, that claims Lazarus the 
beggar as a son of God, that reminds Dives that 
he is nothing more, and that seeks by the Gos- 
pel of the Divine Man to lift human society into 
the mood and power of brotherhood." 

There is not now, nor probably ever will be 
again, such an occasion for theological discus- 
sion as some periods of the past have afforded. 
"Christology" is not the dominant issue of the 
day, outside of theological conferences and di- 
vinity schools. The present opportunity lies, 
not merely in "the respect of the workingmen 
for Christ," nor even in the responsiveness of 
labor to the " simple gospel of the working Je- 
sus," favorable as these conditions are, if true. 
The churches^ opportunity to-day is social, and 
only social. The responsiveness of the people 

^ George A. Gordon, "Denominational Memories," 31. 



176 THE CHURCHES AND 

to the gospel is a responsiveness to a social gos- 
pel only. It is the outcome of the birth of a 
new spirit of social aspiration in the ranks of 
labor, a spirit which would like the sanction of 
the gospel if the gospel can be shown to con- 
form to it, but which otherwise is not interested 
in the gospel at all. 

Experience has demonstrated that the policy 
of inviting, scolding, and warning the un- 
churched is not sufficient. The invitation is de- 
clined, the scolding is resented, the warning is 
ridiculed. If the churches are not to miss their 
present chance, they must seek the people; they 
must modernize their preaching and their prac- 
tice, especially along social and economic lines; 
they must revise and improve their methods in 
the light of experience; and they must secure 
abler leaders and preachers. 

As the workingmen will not come to the 
churches, the churches must go to the working- 
men. If there is any adaptation to be done, 
the churches must take the initiative; for, appar- 
ently, the people are getting along much better 
(for awhile, at least) without the churches than 
the churches can without the people. This pol- 
icy of seeking the people is especially to be ex- 
pected in those churches in which the clergy are 
not a special class in the nature of a sacred aris- 



THE WAGE EARNERS 177 

tocracy, but are a "citizen clergy," as in Eng- 
land and America. 

There must be an aggressive, intelligent and 
carefully planned campaign to recapture the 
masses of the workingmen. The women and 
children also must not be neglected; for even 
they, especially business women, are showing 
signs of failing to respond to the confidence 
which has for so long been justly placed in 
them. Nor is it worth while to "build up" one 
church by merely taking the members out of 
another. This process may help the individual 
member, if he finds a better church; but it 
makes no impression upon society as a whole. 

It is truly said that the church must save the 
immigrant or she cannot save herself.* There 
is a great demand for churchmen of all denom- 
inations to work among the foreigners. The 
immigrant, a stranger in a strange land, is con- 
fronted by many difficult problems, in the 
handling of which a single word from one who 
knows might sometimes save an infinity of 
trouble. Here is a chance for Christian work 
which, if it were more frequently seized upon, 
would save many an immigrant's faith in re- 
ligion. To be sure, plans for capturing the for- 
eign Catholic and making a Protestant of him 

» Stelzle, "Christianity's Storm Centre," 26. 



178 THE CHURCHES 

the moment he lands have been carefully 
worked out; and it has been found that the 
Italians are open to evangelization. The chief 
obstacle to this kind of missionary work among 
the foreigners, according to one of its leaders, 
is the lack of harmony and cooperation between 
the Protestant churches/ A greater obstacle, 
as it would appear to the disinterested observer, 
is that the movement is a case of misdirected 
effort, so long as its sole aim is the conversion of 
Catholics to Protestantism. If the Home Mis- 
sions would direct their energies to keeping the 
immigrants in active connection with the 
churches to which they are accustomed; and, 
better still, if they would devote the same 
amount of zeal to missionary work among all 
classes of the population, native as well as fo- 
eign, it would seem more in harmony with 
present needs. 

* Grose, "Aliens or Americans?" 



CHAPTER II 

SOCIAL PREACHING 

^T^HE churches must offer the people a mod- 
"^ ern Christianity in harmony with current 
modes of thought in history and science. In- 
sistence on the traditional theology is an utter 
failure. Revisions and reinterpretations accom- 
plish but little. The churches must look to the 
problems of the present rather than of the past. 
They must not forget that other agencies are at 
work educating the common people, and that 
those agents are "right up to date." While re- 
ligion remains the chief part of the churches' 
work, they must so broaden their definition of 
religion as to cover all life; while they must 
continue the work of character building, it must 
be placed on a broader basis. They must trans- 
fer their onslaught from personal and individual 
"vice" to social and collective "sin."^ They 
must remember that the churches are at least 
one of the means of social regeneration; that 
the coming of the Kingdom of God should not 

» Ross, "Sin and Society." 

179 



i8o THE CHURCHES AND 

be brought about exclusively by the schools and 
the settlements and the labor organizations and 
the political parties and the "secular'' press. 

The great problems in the minds of the peo- 
ple to-day are not theological but social prob- 
lems. The people care not about the disputes 
of the Higher Criticism, nor about the philosophy 
of religion, nor even about the place of Christ in 
theology — the great Christological problem on 
the solution of which the divines seem to think 
the world hangs, but about which, as a matter 
of fact, the greater part of the world cares not at 
all. The religious problem about which the 
world is concerned is quite a different matter. 
"Behind all the extraordinary achievements of 
modern civilization there lies the burdening 
sense of social mal-adjustment which creates 
the social question." ^ The social question is 
a religious problem in its spirit, though its form 
is economic. At its root is a "passionate de- 
mand for industrial justice"; and the problem 
of industrial justice is almost the only ethical 
problem which the churches have not already set- 
tled to the practical satisfaction of all? 

The churches have accomplished their work 

* Peabody, /. c, 2. 

2 Except the socialists, whose philosophy does not permit them 
to accept the conclusions of Christian ethics, as shown in Part 
III. 



THE WAGE EARNERS i8i 

too well for their own good. The Christian 
standards of ethics are in the atmosphere and 
the blood; they have become the conscience of 
Western peoples. The churches now are saying 
nothing which the people do not already know. 
So long as the ministers confine themselves to 
the old ground of personal morality, it is as 
though they were to repeat the table of threes 
every Sunday morning. In ethics they conduct 
a perpetual kindergarten; when they talk the- 
ology they are conducting a seminary in He- 
brew for people who don't know an aleph from 
a carotid artery, and don't care. "Liberty and 
not theology is the enthusiasm of the nineteenth 
century," wrote Lecky; and his words are, if 
possible, truer of the twentieth than of the 
nineteenth century. 

What the people of to-day need, and what the 
ministers ought to give them, is social preaching, 
discussion of social and economic matters 
from the highest ethical and religious point of 
view. The churches must train a new con- 
science prepared to meet the new temptations 
of a commercialized age. "The evolution of 
conscience has not kept pace with the deepening 
problems of civilization." ^ These problems 
are in the domain of social ethics. They de- 

» Crooker, "The Church of To-day," 142. 



i82 THE CHURCHES AND 

mand an intimate acquaintance with the opera- 
tion of social and economic forces, and a clear 
and straightforward discussion of them in all 
their details. The greatest preachers and 
prophets the world has known dealt directly and 
intimately with the social conditions of their 
times. When the ordinary preachers have neg- 
lected these, the masses of the people, with 
unerring instinct, have denied their claim to re- 
ligious leadership, and have followed "laymen," 
like Shaftesbury and Phillips and Roosevelt, as 
their real priests. 

It should not be necessary to prove that such 
preaching is scriptural.* That it is so we think 
has been sufficiently established; but scriptural 
or not, it must be done if the churches are to per- 
form any useful function in their present environ- 
ment. There is a great source of social energy 
in the teachings of the Old and New Testa- 
ments, as yet unutilized, but which could be 
made to meet the revolt of the laboring classes 
by proving that "the Christian religion is ra- 
tional, practicable, socially redemptive, and 
economically justified." ^ The preacher has an 
opportunity to point out the responsibility of 
Christians for social conditions, and to train 

* "Ethical preaching is scriptural." Stelzle, /. c, 6i. 
' Peabody, /. c, 299. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 183 

that individual sensitiveness to social obliga- 
tions which is the most pressing need of the 
day. The subtle variations of personal responsi- 
bility which the complex ramifications of capital 
permit to-day need to be traced home and defi- 
nitely insisted upon.* The minister must preach 
"the new evangelism, which aims to reform the 
social evils and wrongs that breed sinners." ^ 

It is unquestionably the duty of the churches 
to assist in effecting reforms by cooperation 
with other agencies in the moulding of public 
opinion; such cooperation requires well-in- 
formed social preaching. Perhaps Professor Com- 
mons's suggestion that a minister should devote 
one-half his pulpit work to sociology is not ask- 
ing too much.^ Certainly if that were done the 
ministry would no longer be subject to Professor 
Veblen's jibe: "What falls within the range of 
economics falls below the proper level of solici- 
tude of the priesthood in its best estate." 

* "A striking illustration of the lack of a sense of responsibility 
which those having capital to invest often evince was brought to 
light recently in New York City when it was discovered that a 
prominent church was deriving a part of its revenues from the 
ownership of some of the worst tenement houses in the city. When 
those charged with funds to further the mission of Christ can per- 
mit them to be invested in insanitary and immoral tenements, 
not much regard for public welfare is to be expected from ordinary 
investors." Seager, "Introduction to Economics," 251. 

^ Outlook, June 6, 1908. 

^ J. R. Commons, "Social Reform and the Church," 19, 21. 



i84 THE CHURCHES AND 

If the preachers made a habit of diligently 
acquiring and systematically and clearly pre- 
senting social facts, they might also be better 
able to satisfy the present demand for social 
leaders from the churches. Leadership in so- 
cial movements is a field from which ministers 
are conspicuously absent, although in it is an 
opportunity to get into close touch with the 
people and with their aims such as the clergy 
ought not neglect. Hitherto they have been 
unable to take advantage of this opportunity, 
not only on account of indifference but more 
particularly because of ignorance of the nature 
of the problems with which they would have to 
deal. 

Of course the pulpit must be absolutely non- 
partisan and impartial in its treatment of social 
questions. It has no place for the suggestion 
that "the rich should be driven out of the 
churches," * any more than it should allow the 
poor to remain out without any effort to regain 
them. There is no reason why the rich should 
be neglected; in fact, there are several reasons 
why they should receive special attention. 
Moderation, for example, and the refinement of 
amusements, should be encouraged as virtues in 
the rich as well as in the poor. 

* Perry, 4 Am. Jour. Soc^ 624, 



THE WAGE EARNERS 185 

The churches' treatment of social matters 
must also be marked by absolute and unflinch- 
ing justice, so far as they can see it. This is a 
difficult matter; for often the allocation of the 
justice is not entirely clear; and when it is 
fairly obvious, insistence upon it is quite sure to 
antagonize the side placed in the wrong. Fear- 
lessness toward wealth and "corporate highway 
robbery" is needed; but an equal fearlessness 
is necessary toward organized labor and mob 
rule. 

The clergy are bound to mutual sympathy 
with rich and poor; but the greater need of the 
poor, and the relative disadvantage of their po- 
sition, cannot help but sway the "shepherds of 
the flock" toward the side of the common peo- 
ple. They should make every effort to grasp 
the significance of the labor movement from the 
inside; for their position is such that they are 
not likely to get at the facts without special 
exertion. 

On occasion, the pastor should expect to be 
the champion of labor. For it must be recog- 
nized that labor is not an ordinary commodity. 
It is the disposal of the souls of men which is in- 
volved in settling the market price of labor. It 
is not inconceivable that a true pastor, whose 
charge consisted of a large element of laborers, 



i86 THE CHURCHES AND 

must at times be drawn irresistibly into what 
appear superficially to be mere bargaining dis- 
putes, mere incidents of the "higgling of the 
market," but are, in reality, contests over the 
price of health, strength, brain, character, and 
life. 

This aspect of the subject is full of practical 
difficulties, and one should be careful to avail 
oneself of the results of experience, whenever 
possible. National recognition of organized 
labor, as by the Presbyterian Church, has had 
a good effect. It is said that the brilliant dis- 
covery that Paul was a member of a labor union 
produces, when properly handled, a better 
feeling on the part of the workingmen toward 
the church.^ The observance of Labor Sunday 
has been an unquestionable good. The "peo- 
ple's forum" idea works well, when under tact- 
ful but firm leadership. At the Morgan Memo- 
rial, in Boston, the Forum meets every Sunday 
afternoon to listen to a talk on some social 
question, usually given by a minister. The 
meeting is then thrown open to the audience, 
usually composed almost entirely of working- 
men, for discussion. In Boston the Forum is 
a thoroughly democratic institution, and its suc- 
cess grows the longer it operates. In New York 

» Stelzle, /. c, 67. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 187 

the same thing has been tried at the Parish 
House of the Church of the Ascension, and the 
same gratifying success is reported/ Similar 
experiments are being tried in other places. 

In a former part of this discussion it was seen 
that a large proportion of the objections the 
people urge against the churches are simply 
misunderstandings either of theory or of fact. 
The minister is in a position to correct these 
misunderstandings, and this is a part of his 
work he should by no means neglect. If the 
minister does not attend to it, no one will. If 
he cannot get the people into his church to listen 
to him, he should go to them in their lodges, and 
in public lecture halls, and in the newspapers, 
and anywhere else where he can secure their 
attention. After all, the churches are not quite 
so bad as the people think; and it is certainly 
worth while to disseminate some correct infor- 
mation about the facts. 

Of course it must be understood that a min- 
ister's preaching cannot be exclusively on social 
subjects. The church must make its appeal to 
life, and to the whole of life; and, after all, man 
is a being who stands in some relation person- 
ally to God, and that relation is not of second- 

^ Interview with Rev. Percy S. Grant, New York Sun, Apr. 19, 
1908; Outlook, May 16, 1908, p. 113. 



i88 THE CHURCHES AND 

ary importance. The church should be "a 
power-house, where there is generated a supply 
of spiritual energy sufficient to move the world 
with wisdom, courage and peace." * It still 
remains true that the church must be a savior 
first of men, and a savior of society through 
them. "Behind the problem of social life lies 
the problem of individual life."^ There is a 
great deal to be said in favor of the position that 
the solution of the social problem lies in the en- 
forcement of the idea of spiritual sonship,^ es- 
pecially when a stronger emphasis than usual is 
laid on its correlate, brotherhood. "Between 
masters and workmen truly Christian," wrote de 
Laveleye,^ "no difficulty could arise; for justice 
would preside at the distribution of the product." 
Especially must the churches, in the interests 
of the happiness of mankind and the highest 
ideals of civilization, continue to oppose to the 
utmost the grosser forms of the materialistic 
thought of our times. Fortunately, the excesses 
of that form of thought in its baldest manifesta- 
tions are already bringing about a reaction. 
The popular interest in "New Thought," 

» Peabody, /. c, 357. ' George, /. c, 553. 

3 Mathews, "Social Teaching of Jesus," 186; "The Church 
and the Changing Order," 97; Rauschenbusch, /. c, 48; Glad- 
den, "The New Idolatry." 

* De Laveleye, "De Tavenir des peuples catholiques," 29. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 189 

"Christian Science," and similar movements is 
encouraging testimony to the recrudescence of 
spirituaHty and religion. 

But it must be insisted that religion covers all 
the relations of life and not only a single com- 
partment called "sacred." The fallacious sep- 
aration between sacred and secular must be ab- 
solutely abolished. In season and out of season 
it must be enforced that, if this is essentially a 
spiritual universe and not merely a material one, 
if God is all there is, then spirituality must per- 
vade politics, business, and secular occupations, 
as well as "religion" and the ministry; that the 
bank and the factory are as essentially sacred as 
the church; and that what is evil in the church 
is evil in the directors' room and on the stock 
exchange also. The charge that the churches 
divert interest from evils in this life to reward in 
the hereafter must be met by insisting that 
heaven is here if anywhere, and that it is for 
men to insure the reward of their righteous liv- 
ing, in a happy life. A religion which is good 
for Sunday only is no religion at all worthy of 
the name, and the masses of the people to-day 
know it. The doctrine of immanence must be 
consistently and assiduously applied to all life. 
Life is primarily secular; either religion must 
be secularized, or the secular sanctified. 



CHAPTER III 

SOCIAL PRACTICE 

T^HE ministers' social work should not be 
limited to their preaching. They should 
be leaders in the social and philanthropic move- 
ments in their neighborhoods. They should ex- 
hibit an active "enthusiasm for humanity'* of 
a kind that will show clearly that the churches' 
purposes are the best good of the whole of hu- 
manity. The people will serve the churches so 
long as the churches serve the people. The 
churches should embody all the really Christian 
movements of the world. They should incor- 
porate all the social workers. This does not 
necessarily mean that the settlements and other 
"secular" movements for social betterment 
should be made "religious" in a sense different 
from that in which they are so now; it means 
that the churches' definition of religion must be 
so extended that settlement work will easily be 
seen to fall under it. The ministers must be 

brought to see that "mere enthusiasm to save 

190 



THE WAGE EARNERS 191 

souls is not sufficient, for all souls reside in bod- 
ies," and to accept all the consequences of that 
quite innegligible fact. 

For the churches' interest in the amelioration 
of social conditions is not merely an ethical or 
sentimental one. They are vitally interested in 
the remedying of economic evils, in behalf of 
the success of their "soul redemptive" work.* 
Change of character and change of environment 
must go together. Salvation cannot come to a 
community so long as the plague-spot of the 
slum remains within it. The churches' influ- 
ence upon the daily life of the individual de- 
pends largely upon his economic conditions. 
"So long as life is one long scramble for per- 
sonal gain — still more, when it is one long 
struggle against destitution — there is no free 
time or strength for much development of the 
sympathetic, intellectual, artistic, or religious 
faculties."^ Gbhre asks pointedly: "How 
can we be honestly reproachful if a meal in the 
street is begun without the folded hands of 
prayer?" 

Nor should the churches overlook the influ- 
ence of economic conditions upon the supply of 
ministers. In a commercial environment in 

^ Rauschenbusch, /. c, 291. 

'Webb, "Industrial Democracy," 849. 



192 THE CHURCHES AND 

which success is measured by income, and in 
which the income of selfishness is great, while 
that of sacrifice of ability and energy to the good 
of others is small, it does not require a prophet 
to predict the result, so far as the profession of 
pastor is concerned. The decline in the num- 
ber of young men in training for the ministry, 
not only in comparison with the numbers being 
educated for law, medicine, teaching, and busi- 
ness, but absolutely, is notorious. There are 
fewer men in all the theological schools of the 
United States to-day than ten years ago.^ It 
has been seriously proposed that women must 
be encouraged to enter the ministry, to occupy 
the pulpits left vacant by men.^ The commer- 
cial consideration is not the only nor, perhaps, 
the chief reason for this. The ministry in gen- 
eral is still comparatively free from the taint of 
money-greed. And yet it is obviously becoming 
increasingly difficult, as the years go by, to find 
an adequate number of young men of real 
ability who are willing to forego the financial 
benefits which would accrue to them in other 
professions in favor of the "ideal" income of 
the ministry. 

It ought to be sufficiently evident that if the 

» Crooker, "The Church of To-day," 50, 59. 
^ The Christian Advocate (N. Y.), Nov., 1906. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 193 

churches are ever to be composed of the masses 
of the people, and are to be self-supporting, as 
in their best estate they should be, the economic 
conditions must be such that it will be feasible 
for the masses easily to meet the necessary ex- 
penses. Salaries must be adequate, and church 
buildings must be at least "decently" main- 
tained. These call for money; they require 
that the church member must have a fair sur- 
plus income. 

The churches' ministrations, however, should 
not be merely a bait to win the workingmen. 
Besides being wrong, this policy never works. 
Absolute sincerity toward the common man is 
necessary; the churches must be interested in 
him for his own sake, and not as a workingman, 
but as a man. At the same time, they must be 
very careful of his sensibilities. They must not 
arouse any suspicion that they are patronizing 
him. "The church should show the working 
people that it needs them, not that they need 
it." * It must be careful to avoid the appear- 
ance of commercialism in its methods of raising 
money. Churches, like ministers, are held to 
an excessive accountability which is never de- 
manded of other institutions or persons. 

The minister of a properly constituted church 

* Judson, 30 Ann. Am. Ac, 438. 



194 THE CHURCHES AND 

is in a peculiarly favorable position to interpret 
social classes to each other. He can be a real 
mediator between them. "The creation of a 
sympathetic relation between the forces of labor 
and capital is a task of the minister,*' writes Dr. 
Evans.^ Misunderstanding and antipathy be- 
tween these two forces is partly chargeable to 
the ministers' neglect of this opportunity. 

The churches' interest in the mental as well 
as the physical capacities of their workers and 
of the people should make it unnecessary to in- 
sist on the performance of their duty as educa- 
tional centres. The public schools in America 
make adequate provision for the mental train- 
ing of those who are able to take advantage of 
them; but the branches of education which 
really broaden the outlook upon life are, as a 
rule, not reached until the high school, and the 
vast majority of children drop out before arriv- 
ing at that point. The spread of industrial 
education, necessary and commendable as that 
is, threatens further to contract the average 
child's acquaintance with "the humanities." 
Each church might well be, so far as possible, 
a miniature University Extension centre. The 
clergy of to-day, especially in the "liberal" 

» Evans, "The Social Work of a Church in a Factory Town," 

30 Ann. Am. Ac, 504. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 195 

churches, have not neglected wide reference to 
literature. Literature is good; but what the 
people need more than Chaucer and Villon is 
economics and sociology, and these the minis- 
ters should be in position to supply. Especially 
they should be prepared to cooperate in the 
dissemination of correct principles of relief, and 
in the diffusion of real information about alco- 
hoHsm, pauperism, sanitation, etc. 

The preacher must avoid becoming a politi- 
cian. Democracy must be spiritualized, but it 
must be by the influence of the churches and 
not by their authority. Religion should be dis- 
tinguished from government, but not separated 
from it. Politics is necessarily partisan: that 
the churches cannot afford to be. Political 
issues often involve moral questions, and thus 
come within the jurisdiction of the pulpit; but 
the preacher must handle them as an ethicist, 
not as a politician. 



CHAPTER IV 

MODERN METHODS 

TF the new spirit of the churches is thus to be 
one of predominantly social preaching and 
social service, the machinery must be moulded 
anew in accordance therewith. In a progres- 
sive age new methods are always necessary, and 
the churches' traditional slowness and conserv- 
atism in regard to them must be overcome. Of 
course no cast-iron rules can be laid down in 
advance. Any methods suggested must be 
practicable for the ordinary church, and they 
must be subject to modification to fit the needs 
of the particular neighborhood and time. One 
thing may be laid down as universally essential: 
whatever "attractions" the churches oflFer must 
be such as either cannot be obtained anywhere 
else, or else they must be offered in such a way 
that the people will prefer to accept them from 
a church. Thus a dance given by a church in 
an ordinary hall is not different from a dance 
given by any other organization in a hall, ex- 
cept that by most people it is likely to be dis- 
196 



THE WAGE EARNERS 197 

criminated against. Whereas, a dance given by 
the church in its own halls and under the direc- 
tion of its own officers, insures a refinement of 
surroundings which cannot be guaranteed any- 
where else, and is a really attractive thing. 
Similarly, warmth, light and music alone can- 
not be relied upon, for these may be had else- 
where just as well. These are essential, but 
there must be added to them other features 
more attractive than those offered by the 
churches' competitors. It is of no use merely to 
duplicate other activities. The churches are 
bound always to originate or to improve. And 
they must be extremely careful to make their 
ventures "go." Failure, like success, is cumu- 
lative. 

Occasionally, especially among Baptists and 
Catholics, we find a church held together by 
strictness and exclusiveness of doctrine and by 
the terms of church membership, or by a gen- 
uine belief in the authority of the church and 
its divinely appointed priesthood. But, as a 
rule, Protestant attempts based on the authority 
of the church or on discipline fail. Sometimes 
a High Anglican church has been able to en- 
force the confessional, but this fails utterly to 
reach the masses of the people. Even the clubs 
started in the churches are difficult to manage 



198 THE CHURCHES AND 

in any way that would suit a disciplinarian. If 
they are successful they tend to expand far be- 
yond their own neighborhoods, and conse- 
quently to become less and less identified with 
the church in which they originated. Their 
tendency to eliminate from their meetings all 
formal "rehgion" has been already noted. The 
day of external religious authority is irrevocably 
passing. 

Allied to this disinclination to accept author- 
ity is the demand for more democracy in the 
churches. The religion of the common school 
system of America is democracy, and the people 
have learned to expect and to demand it in all 
their cooperative activities. A democratic 
church organization will get and hold people 
conspicuously, whereas the failure of undemo- 
cratic missions and of plutocratic, "exclusive" 
congregations is often observed. The church 
of the future must be democratic. 

Another thing which the people are learning 
from the common schools is the real inessen- 
tialness of the minor differences between 
churches. The evils of competition and the 
advantages of cooperation are just as great in 
the case of the churches as elsewhere in modern 
life. It is the churches' duty to unite. Not that 
important creedal differences are likely to be, or 



THE WAGE EARNERS 199 

should be, overcome; but it would be the part 
of wisdom at present to subordinate these, in 
the presence of the greater problems of society.* 
Moreover, no one denies that sectarianism has 
been carried to an unjustifiable extreme; and it 
is possible that cooperative sociological work 
may be a means of healing many minor breaches 
and getting rid of the petty sectarianism which 
is the bane of organized Christianity.^ Federa- 
tion of churches in cities, towns and counties, 
for administrative and social purposes,^ could 
not help being a good thing for efficiency. For 
one thing, it would remedy the present poor 
distribution of churches. The country towns 
would not have one church to 80 people, and 
the cities one to 3,000. Proper cooperation 
would also make it possible for each church to 
have assigned to it a definite task with the under- 
standing that it, and it alone, would be held re- 
sponsible for its performance. Each church 
should be made accountable for the unchurched 
masses in its immediate neighborhood, native or 
foreign, and should not be interfered with. 
It must be recognized that methods and pro- 

* Ross, "Sin and Society," 85. 

' For an exceedingly significant illustration of the modern ten- 
dency toward the unification of religion about a social centre, see 
"A Civic Revival," Outlook, July 11, 1908. 

* Strong, "New Era," 312. 



200 THE CHURCHES AND 

grammes which work in the country will not 
often do in the city. The city has its own pecul- 
iar problems, which must be solved in their own 
way, and by men raised and trained in city work. 
It is in the cities that the policy of "aggressive 
evangelism" is likely to be most successful.* 
"Seats Free, Everybody Welcome," is not a suf- 
ficient invitation. Revivals, shop-services, sum- 
mer-tents, extensive advertising, etc., are meth- 
ods of securing attention whose efficacy has been 
often demonstrated. Every church must be 
evangelistic in some considerable degree; and 
it must be remembered that it is not only the 
"evangeHcal" churches that can be evangelistic. 
The duty of social evangelization rests upon all 
churches, and neither "Hberal" nor "evangeli- 
cal" is as yet sufficiently awake to that fact. 
The "evangelical" churches are subject to a 
special risk in this connection : the risk of mak- 
ing the mistake that the masses can be "saved" 
as masses, and not as individuals. The soul is 
a delicate thing, like a watch; souls "saved" by 
the wholesale are like watches made by machin- 
ery: they are cheap, and don't wear well. 

Perhaps the most characteristically city work 
is that of the institutional churches. This work 
recognizes that the churches must reach the 

^ Stelzle, "Christianity's Storm Centre," passim. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 201 

masses on the plane where the masses live; that 
they must lead to the spiritual through the phys- 
ical. The best institutional churches are thor- 
oughly religious, and religious in the best sense: 
the sense that covers every phase of life. They 
recognize the duty and the value of all-day and 
every-day ministration. "You cannot get an- 
gels out of a block of marble with a stroke of the 
chisel once a week." * And so they keep after 
their people daytime and evening, seven days in 
the week, working along every line, physical, 
mental and moral, through which a spiritually 
helpful uplift may be given. In this kind of 
work the absolute necessity of cooperation be- 
tween churches again becomes apparent, in the 
interests of harmony and efficiency. Within the 
church itself a combination of democracy with 
strong autocracy, as at St. George's in New 
York, seems to be most successful. The leader 
must, of course, be a man of religious fervor and 
vast administrative ability. The most success- 
ful volunteer workers are those who have been 
brought up in the church, have derived the most 
benefit from it, and are consequently most inter- 
ested in it. Trained workers are necessary in 
some departments, and sometimes these cannot 
be secured without the payment of salaries; 

* Judson, 30 Ann. Am. Ac.^ 439. 



202 THE CHURCHES AND 

but, other things being equal, volunteer work is 
best, because most spontaneous. 

The rock on which institutional churches and 
missions are most likely to break is the matter 
of relief. Dr. Rainsford found, of course, that 
he would have to make the sittings in his church 
free before anything else could be done. But 
beyond that the parishioner pays for what he 
gets, though not always the cost price. The 
great success of the Baptist Shoreditch Taber- 
nacle in London,* which uses no church relief 
at all, is very encouraging to those whose fear 
of its dangers would lead them to do away with 
it altogether. The combination of religion with 
indiscriminate relief almost always detracts from 
the success of both. And the spectacle of sev- 
eral churches in the same neighborhood making 
bids for the people with indiscriminate dona- 
tions leads Charles Booth to warn us that the 
special dangers arising from degrading forms of 
competition apply to charity quite as much as 
to industry, and call no less imperatively for in- 
tervention.^ In the absence of individual and 
cooperative regulation, public opinion always 
intervenes with its strong disapproval. 

Although it is true that in general church 
privileges should not be sold, and that self- 
» Booth, /. c, II, 8i. ^ Ibid., 45' 



THE WAGE EARNERS 203 

support is not the most important thing for an 
institutional church, yet the fact remains that 
those are weak churches in which a few indi- 
viduals pay all the expenses. One may be pau- 
perized as truly by free "religion" as by free 
blankets or free tobacco. In its worst phases 
the recipients of such bounty develop a moral 
flabbinesss and shiftlessnes which are far in- 
deed from religious; at the best, it works insidi- 
ously against that individual independence 
which is essential to democracy. 

On the other hand, it would be a mistake to 
assume that the people will be satisfied with any 
unnecessary stinting of expense. "The masses 
in New York require the very best preaching, 
architecture and music." The same is true of 
the masses everywhere. They are so well 
trained by their "betters" in the incidents of 
luxury that they will not have anything "cheap," 
even as a gift. Besides, cheap things are not 
usually attractive. Evidence of costliness is to 
most people the only guarantee of aesthetic 
quality. The advantages of appeal to the aes- 
thetic sense are generally recognized. It is util- 
ized to great effect by the Catholic church 
everywhere. The value of music, from every 
point of view, has been acknowledged, with few 
exceptions, from time immemorial. The Prot- 



204 THE CHURCHES AND 

estants would do well if, instead of spending 
annually millions on the heathen in foreign 
lands, they would spend the same or more mill- 
ions on the heathen at home. Small expendi- 
ture in home missionary work, as in any other 
kind of advertising, gets small results. 

The following paragraph from a denomina- 
tional paper sums up the situation admirably: * 
"Our city missions are mostly a disgrace to us. 
And the people whom we are attempting to 
reach know it. Their minds are often quite as 
keen as ours. The trouble with our churches is 
that they are not willing to spend sufficient 
money and to show a real interest in these city- 
mission efforts. A rich city church, with a home 
of its own costing thousands of dollars, carpeted, 
cushioned, adorned with rich pews, pipe-organ, 
and stained windows, will have as a * mission' 
a wretched, unpainted hut on a side street, 
alongside negro cabins, with battered chairs, 
worn-out hymnals, no facilities for Sunday- 
school work or the physical comfort of the chil- 
dren, and expect the *poor' to crowd into it. 
The kind of poor we have in our cities of mod- 
erate size will do nothing of the kind. Nor can 
they be blamed. Neither will they go to service 
in the rich church itself — at least not till their 

* Cited in Liierary Digest, July i8, 1908, p. 86. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 205 

wages have increased till they can dress as they 
see others dress." 

There must be an increased sense of individ- 
ualized responsibility among the church mem- 
bers. The conception of the universality of re- 
ligion makes the layman's opportunity; and 
each church member can and should be a social 
missionary. Pastors must know how to set their 
people to work. There must be closer and 
more effective organization within the churches. 
The pastor must be a specialist in such admin- 
istrative work; and his authority, established by 
training and experience, must be recognized 
and maintained in the "congregational" 
churches as well as in the (nominally) less 
democratic denominations. The defect of de- 
mocracy has always been its unwillingness to 
defer to the leadership of ability; the churches 
might demonstrate its practicability. Leader- 
ship is as essential in church administration as 
in any other. Lack of it results in inefficiency 
and failure, and keeps men out of the churches; 
with it, a small body of workers can, by the 
cumulative effects of success, make an impor- 
tant institution. 

Personal evangelism is a need created by the 
present situation: there must be a transmission 
of the Spirit by a universal contact which can 



2o6 THE CHURCHES AND 

come only from the laity. Leaving everything 
to the minister makes neglect of the non-church- 
goer inevitable. When the minister can call on 
tv^o hundred families, each member of his con- 
gregation might reasonably be expected to attend 
to two. The absence of this kind of per- 
sonal effort is apt to be taken by the unchurched 
as evidence of indifference, of lack of spiritual 
life. This variety of personal work is needed 
also for its tonic effects on the worker himself 
The idea is altogether too prevalent that if one 
contributes to the financial support of a church 
one is doing all that can be expected. Money 
is no substitute for personal service. To the 
masses the check of a successful busmess man 
does not represent a sacrifice; and sacrificial 
atonement is still necessary. That is why the 
Salvation Army and the army of settlement 
workers get results, while the missions languish. 
The arrest of the modern tendency toward 
the break-up of the home life would contribute 
materially toward the good of the churches; 
and the opportunity of home-rehabilitation is 
one which is peculiarly for the laity. For the 
need of personal help in improving the home — 
and only by improvement can it be saved — calls 
especially for house-to-house visitation on a 
scale which is impossible for the clergy. This 



THE WAGE EARNERS 207 

process would also afford that personal contact 
which is needed by both the church-goer and the 
unchurched, and would accomplish that wider 
distribution of the personally good and self-sac- 
rificing in the slums and elsewhere where their 
example and influence are needed. 

There are numerous special methods resorted 
to in special cases, whose value must be deter- 
mined each time solely by their success or fail- 
ure. For example, the "High Church" meth- 
od, aside from its theological bearings, is some- 
times successful and sometimes not. Booth re- 
ports that in one case a High Church service, 
bright and short, with strong appeal to the im- 
agination and little strain on the attention, 
secured a genuine congregation of quite poor 
people. Occasionally, the insistence on con- 
fession is successful. But on the whole. High 
Church efforts in London are not heartily re- 
sponded to. There is a general opposition to 
ritualism; "simple gospel" services reach more 
people than "Romanism"; elaborate services 
at St. Stephen's fail completely. Booth con- 
cludes that the value of High Church methods 
is extremely doubtful. 

But on the other hand, an appeal to the spec-' 
tacular, without the objectionable ritualistic 
features, is usually more or less successful. A 



2o8 THE CHURCHES AND 

free use of sensational methods made even a 
High Church prosperous under adverse circum- 
stances in one case in London. The great effi- 
cacy of these methods is demonstrated in Lon- 
don in the North Central Wesleyan Mission,* 
St. James Hall, the United Methodist Free 
Church (built in the shape of a lighthouse), and 
other instances which might be multiplied with- 
out end from England and America. On the 
other hand there are churches, and many of 
them, which succeed fairly well within their 
sphere, without resort to spectacular extremes — 
which have their (too frequently pointed out) 
dangers. This is a matter which must be deter- 
mined in each individual case by the character 
of the surrounding population and the personal 
qualifications and temperament of the minister. 
The value of the use of the secular press in a 
modern way is receiving increasing recognition. 
The Presbyterians in America have a "Press 
Bureau," and its manager bears eloquent testi- 

^ Booth, I. c, II, 125: "The North Central Wesleyan Mission's 
success is due to exceptional methods. The secret is the breathing 
of human life into every function of religion; or it may be put the 
other way, as the introduction of religion into every function of 
human life. The energy evolved by this method is astonishing. 
Everything hums with activity, and is carried on with what the 
Americans describe as a hurrah of enthusiasm. There would 
seem to be no time for meditation. The quieter influences of re- 
ligion are lost; but there is assuredly no time for doubt." 



THE WAGE EARNERS 209 

mony to its good results. The Unitarian Church 
in America has recently developed what it calls 
"The Paragraph Pulpit/' which is reaching 
eflFectively a class of people who could never be 
induced to enter a church, and yet are open to 
the message offered them, and are in the course 
of time subject to "conversion" to a better 
understanding. 

' Mr. Booth suggested that a touch of fashion 
would fill some neglected churches; and the 
history of one prominent denomination in 
America verifies this fully. The only disadvan- 
tage is that it fills the churches in question only 
with fashionable people, and draws those from 
other churches. This suggestion was probably 
ironical; the following idea is simply thought- 
less: a London church conceived the notion of 
having services much earlier than usual, so that 
wives could get home in time to cook dinner; 
overlooking the fact that the working people, too, 
like to sleep late on Sunday. However, this is 
not the place to go into a detailed discussion of 
miscellaneous church methods. 

But just one word must be said with reference 
to churches in small towns and in the country. 
It would be as great a mistake for them to at- 
tempt to take over bodily the plans and meth- 
ods of city churches as for the latter to model 



210 THE CHURCHES AND 

their methods on the needs and experiences of the 
former. Habits of thought and of Hfe, social 
customs and traditions, are entirely different 
from those in cities, and they also differ from one 
town to another. Each locaHty is a separate 
problem and requires separate study. Peculiar 
quahfications are demanded in the minister of 
the rural church, such qualifications as are most 
likely to be found in men born and bred in such 
communities. The city minister is no more 
likely to "fit" in the country than the country 
minister in the city. 

There is need for serious discussion of the 
question of the superfluity of churches in small 
towns. Sectarianism has here done its deadliest 
work, and it is safe to say that there are too 
many churches in most villages. These churches, 
as a rule, are too small and too poor to do 
effective work; and their mutual jealousies and 
rivalries impede all efforts at cooperation. 
Their members are exceedingly apt, except 
under extraordinary circumstances, to develop 
that selfish and narrow outlook which so often 
goes with suburban and provincial life. Alto- 
gether it is questionable whether Gbhre's dic- 
tum that "the small parish church must be re- 
vived"^ should apply to America, whatever 

* Gbhre, /. c, 217. 



THE WAGE EARNERS 211 

may be its justification in Germany. Says Mr. 
Crocker:^ "Religious destitution has fallen 
upon many towns and villages because there 
are too many churches in them." The truth 
seems to be that here "we need a new and brief 
period of Christian martyrdom, in which many 
churches shall suffer death for the glory of 
God." 2 

* Crooker, I. c, 14. 
2 Strong, /. c, 327. 



CHAPTER V 

THE MODERN MINISTER 

T7INALLY, we must not forget that as the 
salvation of society can be wrought only 
through individuals, in the ultimate analysis, so 
also with the salvation of the churches. For 
better or for wor^e, the churches, or at any rate, 
the Protestant churches, depend upon their 
ministers; the condition of the churches at any 
given time is a fair index of the quality of their 
ministers. It is the personality of the man that 
makes or mars the individual church; and it is 
the collective ideals and practices of the minis- 
ters which determines whether the churches as 
a whole shall be successful or otherwise in their 
relations with the people. 

That the minister must be a good man goes 
without saying. The influence of personal ex- 
ample is immeasurable, for good or for bad. 
The eflficacy of personal relations depends upon 
the character of the "parson"; and it has been 
asserted that more has been accomplished for 
the church through personal contact with the 



THE WAGE EARNERS 213 

masses than through all its institutionalized 
work. It is time, however, to call ministers' 
attention to the fact that goodness is no longer 
identified with piety or devoutness. A minister 
is usually taught that he must be better than 
other men; and often the only way he can be 

better than some of the people in his parish is , 

in the assumption of an excessive devoutness. /^^,_j 
But this at once creates in him the "holier than 
thou" feeling, and ends his further usefulness. 
This is not a pious age. 

We must also have a higher average of preach- 
ing ability than the churches can at present 
boast. The minister can no longer rely upon the 
"sacredness" of his calling to secure him a 
hearing. He must meet the demands of the 
populace; and those demands are numerous 
and exacting. He must have unlimited famil- 
iarity with all modern thought on all modern 
subjects; he must be able to discuss the ethics 
of employers' liability Sunday morning; social- 
ism Sunday evening; industrial education at a 
teachers' meeting Monday; municipal govern- 
ment on Tuesday; Browning Wednesday after- 
noon, and the efficacy of prayer Wednesday 
evening; talk to the Woman's Club Thursday 
afternoon on current topics, and to the High 
School Friday afternoon on the duties of citi- 



214 THE CHURCHES AND 

zenship; and Saturday he may be asked to con- 
duct a Nature-study excursion, working out in 
the meantime his next sermon on the Roycian 
conception of immortaHty, which, of course, he 
must put into popularly intelHgible form. 

IntelHgibility is a virtue too little appreciated 
by many preachers. With the shifting of the 
churches from the masses of the people with 
only slight education to the wealthier and pre- 
sumably more cultured classes has come a style 
of preaching which is aimed at the latter, but 
which, in fact, often misses its mark altogether. 
There must be sound and deep thinking in every 
sermon, and such thinking is not easily followed 
or grasped even when most clearly presented. 
Preaching must be intellectual; but if it is to 
accomplish any purpose, it must be understood. 
Its aim is to lead people to do or to be some- 
thing better than their present doing or being. 
It must persuade. The preacher therefore must 
use every means of persuasion; and if he finds 
that a baldly logical presentation of a thought is 
not effective (and it rarely is), he should not 
hesitate to avil himself of any other manner or 
method which will secure the desired result. 

And the minister must display the most un- 
questionable sincerity of thought and expression, 
or the people will none of him. Any suspicion 



THE WAGE EARNERS 215 

that he is subservient to financial or ecclesias- 
tical influence, that it is not his mind but an- 
other's which is working, is sure to be fatal. 
Then his best thought must be presented with 
freshness and brilliancy, or the people will stay 
home and read the newspapers and magazines, 
where the editors are at great pains to insure 
freshness and brilliancy. Then he must have 
energy and histrionic ability; and if he hasn't 
them by nature, he must acquire them by art. 
With it all he must avoid any tinge of feminin- 
ity. His bearing in the pulpit and out of it 
must be one of essential manliness; neither 
conceited, nor overbearing, nor over-refined. 
He must be always a gentleman, but never a fop. 
In this connection must be noticed a mistaken 
policy pursued by some churches in keeping 
their old ministers in full activity long after 
their strength has ceased to be equal to the 
tasks imposed upon them. We can all call to 
mind famous ministers whose old age was a ver- 
itable sunset glow of beauty and power. And 
yet it must be admitted these cases are rare. 
More often advancing years bring failing health 
and failing mental grasp, which are, perhaps, 
not so much noticed by the minister's contem- 
poraries, but are only too obvious to the younger 
generation growing up under him, and perhaps 



2i6 THE CHURCHES AND 

leaving the church rather than giving voice to 
their real feelings. Over-long pastorates have 
been the death of many a church. 

There is great danger also in the practice of 
retaining an ex-minister, retired on account of 
age, in connection with the church as pastor- 
emeritus. There is in this something as com- 
plimentary to the church which thus shows its 
appreciation of a life of ability and service as 
there is to the minister thus honored. But ex- 
perience has shown that, with human nature 
constituted as it is, embarrassments are bound 
to ensue. The pastor-emeritus, by the inevi- 
table processes of human life, is a generation be- 
hind; but he rarely knows it himself, and his 
friends are not kind enough to him and to the 
church to make him aware of it. It is difficult 
for him to realize that he is retired; that his po- 
sition is an honorary one, relieved of responsi- 
bilities and consequently of official duties. And 
so he takes a natural interest in the way his suc- 
cessor does things, and if his successor happens 
to do them in a way to which he is not accus- 
tomed, he is apt to betray his apprehension that 
the church is being ruined by departures from 
the ways of the fathers. In parishes where, 
through his long residence and intimate rela- 
tions with the people from their childhood, his 



I 



THE WAGE EARNERS 217 

influence, though unofficial, is still considerable, 
this cannot help but lead to difficulties. Re- 
tirement with the understanding that the ex- 
minister is to sever all official relations with his 
parish when he leaves its active ministry is the 
remedy for this. 

That ministers should be high-grade social 
leaders has already been pointed out. That 
they must be hard workers is surely obvious. 
"Perspiration is just as important as inspira- 
tion, and sometimes it accomplishes more," 
says Mr. Stelzle. A minister cannot afford to 
be too busy to attend to any request for help of 
any kind which comes to him. The plea of pre- 
occupation is never accepted from a clergyman. 
He must expect to work eighteen hours a day, if 
necessary, to help secure an eight-hour day for 
the rest of humanity. His life is a life of service, 
as he must be fully aware before he ventures 
into it; and as there is no possibility of over- 
production, there are no natural or legal limits 
on the length of the service-day. 

Finally, a matter of clerical education calls 
for attention. Professor Peabody has remarked : * 
"Neither ethical passion nor rhetorical genius 
equips a preacher for economic judgments." 
Yet, as we have seen, the insistent need of this 

» Peabody, /. c, 35. 



2i8 THE CHURCHES 

time is for preachers capable of making sound 
economic and sociological judgments. The re- 
proach of their ignorance must be taken away. 
They must become familiar with sociology and 
economics in all their branches. They must 
study them at first hand, by actual contact and 
by investigation of "sources."* Their formal 
theological education must be broadened so as 
to include these subjects. A few of the leading 
schools provide for them now — Harvard Divin- 
ity and others connected with the great non- 
sectarian universities; but, as a rule, the minis- 
ters' ignorance of the social topics in which all 
the rest of the population is vitally interested 
is as dense at though they did not live on this 
planet. Nowhere is attention to this sufficiently 
insisted upon. Education in theological semi- 
naries should be thoroughly modernized and 
"secularized." Whatever may be the case for 
the Biblical scholar and prospective professor, 
for the active minister economics and sociology 
are vastly more important than Hebrew and 
Aramaic; the vital concerns of Europeans and 
Americans of to-day are much better worth 
knowing than the habits of the Hittites and the 
Perizzites. 



* But avoiding the indecencies of the amateur "sociologist" so 
amusingly depicted by one of the victims — Stelzle, /. c, loi. 



CONCLUSION 

TN concluding this study one is minded to 
consider whether, after all, there is hope for 
the continuance of organized religion. It is un- 
deniable that the people as a whole have de- 
serted the churches, and that it is at least partly 
the churches' "fault." I have tried to point out 
the way the churches, as it seems to me, must go 
to regain the people; but it is the only way, and 
it is an unquestionably hard one. 

The sum of the situation is this: The churches' 
old methods and ideas have failed; they must 
change their methods and ideas to conform 
with the predominant social interests of the 
day. The churches must he thoroughly socialized. 
If that can be done only at the expense of 
"historical continuity" and the other fetiches 
of the study, by all means let them go. They 
are worth nothing in comparison with religion. 
And the ultimate preservation of religion de- 
pends upon its continued institutionalization. 
It is easy to be optimistic about the " religion of 
the unchurched"; there is undoubtedly a great 
219 



220 THE CHURCHES 

deal of religion among them, inherited and ab- 
sorbed; but it is indefinite and chaotic, and is 
gradually thinning out and disappearing. 

But humanity will not let religion disappear 
entirely. Evolution is a growth of the Spirit; 
progress and civilization exist only in, by and 
through the Spirit. There must be an awaken- 
ing some day. The only question is, Will the 
churches of to-day see their present opportunity 
and grasp ity or will they struggle on fitfully until 
humanity comes to their rescue^ but with a new 
religion of its own ? The call is clear enough; 
will the churches heed it ? 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The following list of works includes the best of the 
literature most closely related to the subject of this book. 
It does not include the innumerable magazine articles, 
for which reference should be made to the standard in- 
dexes. 

Those works which at the present time (1909) are 
most valuable for the English reader are marked with a 
star (*). 

On special topics, see the "Bibliography on Modem 
Social Questions," edited by Rev. John Haynes Holmes, 
and issued by the Unitarian Fellowship for Social Jus- 
tice; also the numbers of "The Gospel of the Kingdom," 
edited by Rev. Josiah Strong. An excellent bibliography 
of English works on Socialism may be found in Le Ros- 
signol, cited below. 

Allen, W. H.: "Efficiency in Religious Work"; Annals 
American Academy of Political and Social Science y 
November, 1907, p. in. (Abbreviated hereafter 30 
Ann. Am. Ac) 

Baader, Franz von: " Ueber die Zeitschrift Avenir und 
Ihre Principien." 

Balmforth, Ramsden: "The New Reformation" 

(1893). 
Baudrillart, Henri J. L.: "Des rapports de Tecono- 

mie politique et de la morale" (1883). 
223 



224 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Bax, E. Belfort: " Essays in Socialism Old and New" 
(1906). 

B.AJC, E. Belfort: " The Ethics of Socialism" (1893). 

Bax, E. Belfort: " Outlooks from the New Standpoint" 
(1890). 

B-\x, E. Belfort: " Outspoken Essays" (1897). 

*B.\x,E. Belfort: " The Religion of Socialism " (1886). 

Bebel, August: "Woman" (189 i). 

♦Bliss, W. D. P.: '*Xew Encyclopedia of Social Re- 
form" (1908). 

Booth, General Willlam: "In Darkest England" 
(1890). 

♦Booth, Ch.arle5: " Life and Labour in London," Part 
III; " Religious Influences," Vols. I to MI (1902). 

Bruce, Willlam S. : " Social Aspects of Christian Moral- 
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Cairns, D. S.: "Christianity and the Modem World" 
(1907). 

Campbell, Reginald J. : " Christianity and the Sodal 
Order" (1907). 

Carstens, C. C: "The Salvation Army — A Criticism"; 
2,0 Ann. Am. Ac, 117. 

Chadwick, Wn.TJAM E.: "The Social Teaching of St. 
Paul" (1906). 

CoATES, Thom.\s F.: "The Prophet of the Poor" (Gen. 
Booth) (1906). 

Cochran, J. W. : " The Church and the Working Man " ; 
30 Ann. Am. Ac, 13. 

CoLE\LAN% J.AMES M.: " Social Ethics" (1903). 

♦Commons, John R. : " Races and Immigrants in Amer- 
ica" (1907). 

Commons, John R.: "Social Reform and the Church" 
(1894). 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 225 

Crafts, Wilbur F.: "Practical Christian Sociology" 

(1906). 
Crapsey, Algernon S.: "The Rebirth of Religion" 

(1907)- 
*Crapsey, Algernon S. : " Religion and Politics" (1903) 
Crooker, Joseph H.: "The Church of To-day" (1908). 
Devine, Edward T.: "Principles of Relief" (1905). 
Dole, Charles F.: "The Coming People" (1897). 
Earp, Edwin L. : " Social Aspects of Religious Institu- 
tions" (1908). 
Ely, Richard T.: "French and German Socialism" 

(1883). 
*Ely, Richard T.: "Social Aspects of Christianity" 

(1889). 
*Ely, Richard T.: "Socialism and Social Refonn" 

(1894). 
Evans, D.: "The Social Work of a Church in a Factory 

Town"; 30 Ann. Am. Ac, 75. 
Evans, T. S.: "The Christian Settlement"; 30 Ann. 

Am. Ac, 55. 
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FEB 2/ 1903 



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